• givesomefucks@lemmy.world
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    2 months ago

    It sounds stupid…

    But we got Bin Laden because of a fake vaccine program and I’m like 90% sure that was Polio too…

    So it kind of makes sense. Hell, that was most likely a war crime when we did it. The reason it’s not done is countries won’t let vaccine initiatives happen if they think it’s just military intelligence gathering.

    If anything it’s weird they were letting them happen to begin with.

    • catloaf@lemm.ee
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      2 months ago

      Yes, it was polio. In Pakistan, though, and not part of a UN/WHO program, it was independent.

    • mlg@lemmy.world
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      2 months ago

      Actually, the fake vaccine initiative had several sources say it wasn’t successful in proving OBL’s final location.

      By that point, they had found his suspicious compound anyway but needed some sort of confirmation that OBL was really there.

      Regardless, now a substantial amount of people refuse to take vaccines after they learned the hep b drive was actually a CIA operation.

      Which is really stupid because Pakistan was formerly the last country that still had polio cases and it took them another decade before they finally started to reduce it. iirc they were just recently surpassed by Gaza.

    • Hmm, but now they are denying it. I don’t know what to believe: https://www.rferl.org/a/afghanistan-polio-taliban-vaccination-deny-who/33122994.html

      If they hadn’t denied it, then I would have imagined that the Taliban was so disorganized that they just discovered this - or at least, just realized the potential implications (just connected the dots). That might still be the case, and the denial is simply a false one with the purpose to not worsen their reputation on the world stage.