American pharmaceutical giant Pfizer Inc on Tuesday posted a tweet with an image of a plane which read a banner “Know who’s good at science? Scientists”.
Get onboard! pic.twitter.com/dZ7SabAkGl
— Pfizer Inc. (@pfizer) November 16, 2021
Pfizer has been under a lot of fire over wanting protection against getting sued if the vaccines give side effects. Pfizer is marketing its mRNA Covid-19 vaccine across the world, which was developed in collaboration with German biotechnology company BioNTech SE but it has not yet received approval in India.
Pfizer has been insisting on protection from legal liabilities, which it has been given by other countries, including the United States and several European nations. In several Latin American nations, Pfizer has asked the countries to pledge their sovereign and military assets, including federal reserves and embassies in foreign countries, as indemnity against any future liability that may arise due to side effects of the vaccine or any negligence of the company. The Pharmaceutical giant had also asked the countries to deposit bank guarantees in foreign countries as part of such indemnity.
Naturally, many Twitter users took up the opportunity to give a befitting reply to Pfizer and the tweet got ratioed.
On Twitter, a ratio, or getting ratioed, is when replies to a tweet vastly outnumber likes or retweets. This usually means people are disagreeing with the tweet and considering its content bad.
— LB. (@yanobutok) November 16, 2021
Twitter user pointed out how not taking responsibility about possible side effects does not really help instil confidence in science, the way Pfizer wants one to.
— LB. (@yanobutok) November 16, 2021
Another Twitter user pointed out the record USD 2.3 billion settlement on widespread drug fraud which Pfizer was forced to pay. Pfizer was also accused of paying kickbacks to healthcare providers to induce them to prescribe the drugs. In 2009, it was the largest ever civil fraud settlement in history against a pharmaceutical company.
Ouch.
What kind of science is this, @pfizer? pic.twitter.com/j518KINlKO
— Fanaphaos (@fanaphaos) November 16, 2021
Clearly it opened a can of worms where Twitter users pointed out unfair and criminal practices Pfizer was accused of following.
Pfizer, however, went on to ‘hide’ some of the replies to the tweets which were quite uncomfortable.
At first Pfizer hid the memes and replies that either mocked it or reminded the company of the criminal case and charges against it.
However, after the tweet got ratioed, it kind of gave up on hiding the tweets mocking the meme.
It must be mentioned that the World Health Organisation (WHO) has earlier asked global vaccine manufacturers to share technology with companies in Asian and African countries to help in increasing local vaccine manufacturing. However, the major pharma giants have refused to share their vaccine formula and insisting on governments signing commercial agreements to avail vaccines for their population.
