A post shared more than a thousand times on Facebook within 48 hours claims that Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg and White House medical advisor Anthony Fauci discussed a vaccination plan against Covid-19 when “the epidemic had not yet begun.” As you may imagine, this information spread online and raised many speculations about diabolical plans related to the vaccine – messages such as “It was planned all along”, “The pandemic was created by the elite” and many more that you might have already heard echoed once again. So what are these emails and what do they actually tell us?
First of all, many posts on social media talk about a scandalous “leak” of confidential documents. The reality is less epic: these 4,000 or so pages of emails were obtained legally by the Washington Post and BuzzFeed News thanks to the 1967 Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) that allows any American citizen to request access to records from “any federal agency.” Moreover, in the email exchange which is dated February 27, 2020, Facebook founder does offer resources from his foundation to accelerate and support the start of the human testing phase for a Covid-19 vaccine, but coronavirus was already around at that time, and the whole world was already concerned about it. In fact, at that time, the virus had already caused about 2,700 deaths and had become an international affair. The possibility of making a vaccine was already mentioned in articles, discussions and posts, as it is the case every time a devastating virus appears.
So no, Anthony Fauci and Mark Zuckerberg were not part of an evil plan to kill the whole planet, or to control the world with a dangerous vaccine. Their exchange is nothing shocking given the circumstances and the fear that was taking over the world at that time.
Emma Suleiman
