An official from the Wyoming Department of Health questioned the legitimacy of vaccines for the coronavirus.
Dr. Igor Shepherd, a Readiness and Countermeasures Program manager at Wyoming Department of Health, said the coronavirus was invented by the Chinese to further their agenda of “global communism.” He also questioned Pfizer and BioNTech’s announced vaccine candidate based on what he said are connections to China.
Shepherd’s comments came during a meeting last month, set up by Keep Colorado Free and Open. He claimed the Moderna’s vaccine candidate was developed “secretly” and a “long time ago,” rather than a period of one year.
“It’s mechanical. It’s all built with algorithms. It’s all computerized. They’re trying to re-program us now. They use vaccine computers as to re-program our bodies, actually,” Shepherd said. “When you have an agenda, and you should be dedicated to this agenda. OK. Agenda? What agenda? Global communism, that’s an agenda. And it’s already here in the United States.”
“Are you sure this is what it’s all about? The so-called pandemic, with 99.8% recovery rate and the whole world need to be vaccinated fast,” he continued, speculating about virtual identification and other consequences he thought would arise from a vaccine.
Health experts debunked the conspiracy theory floated by Shepherd, according to the Casper Star-Tribune. Kim Deti, a spokesperson for the Wyoming Department of Health, declined to comment to the Casper Star-Tribune because she said his claims go against the information gathered and shared by them and health experts globally.
Shepherd did not immediately respond to the Washington Examiner’s request for comment.
Records show Shepherd has worked with the Wyoming Department of Health since 2013 and has been a part of the state’s response team to COVID-19. “In his role with the department, he has certainly been involved,” Deti said, “but has not had what would be considered a leadership role in Wyoming’s response.”
During his address, Shepherd shared false information about the use of messenger RNA, also called mRNA, claiming it was never tested.
“Researchers have been studying and working with them for decades. Interest has grown in these vaccines because they can be developed in a laboratory using readily available materials. This means the process can be standardized and scaled up, making vaccine development faster than traditional methods of making vaccines,” the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says on their website.
“mRNA vaccines have been studied before for flu, Zika, rabies, and cytomegalovirus (CMV). As soon as the necessary information about the virus that causes COVID-19 was available, scientists began designing the mRNA instructions for cells to build the unique spike protein into an mRNA vaccine,” the CDC continues.
The U.S. health institution notes that mRNA vaccines do not “affect or interact with our DNA in any way,” adding that it “never enters the nucleus of the cell, which is where our DNA (genetic material) is kept.”
