If you’ve seen “The Plandemic” video on your social media feed, you’re not the only one, despite multiple platforms trying to stop its spread. While it looks like your typical, professional new interview, it’s a carefully crafted video that shares false information about the coronavirus — information that has already been debunked.
Judy Mikovits is featured in the video, claiming to have worked with Dr. Anthony Fauci to gain credibility. Before providing COVID-19 misinformation, Mikovits was known in the anti-vaccination community. In “The Plandemic,” Mikovits discusses conspiracy theories about the coronavirus pandemic, from its origins and treatments to government action.
“Now, as the fate of nations hang in the balance, Dr. Mikovits is naming names of those behind the plague of corruption that places all human life in danger,” says the narrator of the 30-minute video.
The video is going viral just days after its initial publication, from being promoted within anti-vaccination groups to being shared by minor celebrities.
Who Is Judy Mikovits?
Buzzfeed News reports on Mikovits’ long, problematic professional past. In 2009, she published a study on chronic fatigue syndrome that was retracted because it couldn’t be replicated. She was fired from her job at the Whittemore Peterson Institute and brought up on criminal charges for theft of computer data and property.
In the video, she touches on this with her own view — that she was silenced and held in jail with no charges. However, she was actually arrested for taking lab materials and a computer and released from jail when the institute chose not to press charges.
And in 2014, she wrote a book claiming that Dr. Fauci personally barred her from the National Institute of Health premises, which he denied to fact-checking site Snopes.
It’s her calm and collected composure that makes her stand apart from the typical image of a screaming, crazed conspiracy theorist. Her recently published book, Plague of Corruption: Restoring Faith in the Promise of Science, is now an Amazon bestseller as a result of the viral video.
The Plandemic Documentary, Debunked
The documentary offers dangerous advice to viewers, including that wearing a mask and washing hands increases the risk of getting the coronavirus. The ties to anti-vaccination advocacy shine through as it mentions that the virus is a cover for a plot to control people through vaccines.
Mikovits suggests that you can get COVID-19 from flu vaccines, using results from a study conducted in January of this year. However, the “coronavirus” the study said it was linked to was actually the common cold and not COVID-19, the virus behind the current pandemic. The study mentioned was based on a single flu season and has no evidence of COVID-19 specifically.
Brian Vastag, a former science reporter at The Washington Post who covered the retraction of Mikovits’ paper spoke to NBC News about the viral video. He emphasized that using “discredited science and feel-good lies,” like the ones presented in the video, to make sense of the pandemic is dangerous.
Vastag said, “People are scared. People are dying at an alarming rate. They want answers; an easy out. They want to say somebody caused it,” he said. “But it’s very dangerous. If Americans don’t think it’s transmissible, it’s going to make this worse. And sick people, disabled people and older people are who it’ll hurt the most.”