Twitter blue checkmark attempt to discredit Tess Lawrie and Pierre Kory is flawed
The story claiming pressure (possibly by Unitaid) to suppress evidence showing Ivermectin effectiveness against COVID has been very well documented by Phil Harper and is told powerfully in Tess Lawrie's video. It revolves around how the conclusions of a critical paper by Andrew Hill of Liverpool University were changed in January 2021. I have also previously blogged about it.
In Dec 2021, after the details of Tess Lawrie's zoom call with Hill were released, Pierre Kory wrote an article about it. But (as I have just discovered) twitter blue checkmark 'HealthNerd' wrote this thread claiming that Pierre's article "is filled with obvious, easily checkable lies".
The basis for HealthNerd's claims are:
The Unitaid grant was $32m not $40m as claimed, and
The grant was announced in 2019 not 2021.
But a little investigation shows that his claims are themselves misleading. He misses the key fact that Liverpool University issued this press release on 12 Jan 2021 (below is a screenshot of it in case they remove it now; there was also a press release on Unitaid's own website dated 12 Jan 2021)
Note that the press release announces a new research centre “established as part of $40m consortium primarily funded by Unitaid". And also note that the Director of the Centre is Prof Andrew Owen.
Tess Lawrie's zoom call with Hill was just days after the press release when she discovered the conclusions in Hill's paper were changed to diminish the effectiveness of ivermectin. Hill admitted in the call that there was pressure from other unnamed people who wanted the changes. Lawrie pressed Hill unsuccessfully for the names of the people involved with Unitaid who were involved. However, Phil Harper has now provided evidence that Prof Andrew Owen (who is NOT named as a co-author of Hill's paper) directly edited the paper.
So the claim by HealthNerd that the story by Tess Lawrie and Pierre Kory is "filled with obvious, easily checkable lies" doesn't exactly hold up. Perhaps he owes Tess and Pierre an apology?