Is Ebola made up to sell vaccines?

In a video featuring Peter McCullough, he claims that Ebola is used to scare people and prepare the market for vaccines. It also claims Ebola is really more of a sanitation problem than a virus problem.

Peter McCullough is claiming that “four weeks before the Ebola outbreak was announced, the WHO approved an Ebola vaccine.” He says this shows that drug companies were getting the market ready ahead of time. He also says the WHO works closely with vaccine companies and that the timing of outbreaks and vaccine approvals raises concerns.

But this claim has an important problem. The approved vaccine is for the Zaire strain of Ebola. The current outbreak involves the Bundibugyo strain. These are different strains of the same virus family.

Scientists are studying vaccines for Bundibugyo Ebola, but they are not ready yet. So the approved vaccine and the current outbreak are only partially related. The timing alone does not show that one caused the other or that the outbreak was planned.

Ebola is not a new disease. Different strains of Ebola have caused more than 25 outbreaks since the virus was first found in 1976. These outbreaks have led to thousands of deaths. Scientists have also been working on Ebola vaccines for many years, especially since the large outbreak that began in 2014.

Right now, Ebola is a serious health emergency in some countries in Africa. But it is not considered a major risk for most people in the United States. Most people in the U.S. are very unlikely to need an Ebola vaccine.

Claims like this can sound alarming, but they leave out key facts. In this case, the vaccine approval does not match the strain causing the outbreak. That makes the claim much weaker than it may first appear.