Skeptic Project

You may have recently come across a video on YouTube called Plandemic featuring a virologist claiming to have been persecuted by "Big Pharma" and the "Deep State" for exposing their plan to spread disease. If you believed this 26 minute video, I am sad to say you have been duped.

Here is a critical breakdown of all the false information contained within the documentary and the sources showing it is incorrect.

1. The only "medical expert" interviewed is Judy Mikovits who is a well-known anti-vaccine activist and made unsubstantiated, unproven claims of vaccine contamination as well as having been previously arrested for stealing from a prior employer (WPI). She claims she was "imprisoned" for this but only spent 5 days in jail for stealing, not for her research. - https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/scientist-vaccine-jailed/

https://www.chicagotribune.com/news/ct-xpm-2011-11-22-chi-covering-the-stunning-fall-of-judy-mikovits-20111122-story.html
http://blogs.nature.com/news/2011/12/institute-claims-victory-in-civil-suit-against-judy-mikovits.html

https://www.nature.com/news/2011/111005/full/news.2011.574.html
https://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/754423

2a. She was never placed under a "gag order" as she claimed. She was prevented from destroying the evidence of her misconduct:

On 7 November, a judge from the Nevada court granted a request for a temporary restraining order against Mikovits to prohibit her from "destroying, altering, disseminating, or using trade secrets and confidential information." The order contended that "immediate and irreparable injury, loss, or damage will result to WPI if it does not get this relief." - https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2011/11/controversial-cfs-researcher-arrested-and-jailed
https://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/754423

2b. Mikovits troubles stemmed from a contaminated study she conducted and refused to retract linking a "novel mouse virus" to CFS. "After Mikovits and her research team's Science study appeared in October 2009, many other groups around the world reported that they could not find the mouse retrovirus, dubbed XMRV, in people who had CFS. Mikovits and colleagues subsequently participated in a multilab study that resulted in a September Science Express paper describing how none of the teams could reliably find XMRV in blinded samples from CFS patients. One lab Mikovits collaborated with in the 2009 Science report simultaneously retracted its contribution after discovering that a contaminant explained its XMRV findings."
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2810013/posts

https://mbio.asm.org/content/3/5/e00266-12


2c. The paper was later retracted. In the retraction, Bruce Alberts, the editor-in-chief, wrote that there "is evidence of poor quality control in a number of specific experiments in the Report" and noted that other studies couldn't replicate the findings. "Science has lost confidence in the Report and the validity of its conclusions. We note that the majority of the authors have agreed in principle to retract the Report but they have been unable to agree on the wording of their statement," Alberts wrote. "... We are therefore editorially retracting the Report." - https://science.sciencemag.org/content/334/6063/1636.1


2d. Dr. Ian Lipkin was assigned by NIH czar Anthony Fauci to settle if there was any merit to the connection between XMRV and CFS. Mikovits participated in Lipkin's study and concluded that it was "the definitive answer. ... There is no evidence that XMRV is a human pathogen." - https://www.discovermagazine.com/health/chasing-the-shadow-virus-chronic-fatigue-syndrome-and-xmrv


3a. Dr. Fauci and writer Larry Kramer are actually good friends now, despite Kramer's earlier writings. Kramer, who spent years in a constant rage at Fauci, now calls him "the only true and great hero" among government officials in the AIDs crisis. Kramer later told PBS that when he finally met Dr. Fauci in person, he was extremely receptive to the plight of the LGBTQ community and even put members of the community on NIH committees to get their feedback on how to help fight HIV/AIDs. According to Kramer, "That was the beginning of a major turning point. Dr. Fauci has become the only true and great hero in all of this, in the government, in the system. ... I acknowledge him every chance I can, because we certainly got off to a rocky start."- https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2020/04/20/how-anthony-fauci-became-americas-doctor

https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/aids/interviews/kramer.html

3b. Doubts have been raised if Mikovits ever did work with Fauci. (Though she did work under Lipkin who was assigned to check the XMRV research by Fauci. See 2d.) She has long been part of a movement though to "Fire Fauci" and has accused him of blocking her "research" (how does someone without access to a lab do research?) into a "mouse virus" that causes cancer. - https://www.vice.com/en_ca/article/wxevj5/the-coronavirus-truthers-dont-believe-in-public-health

4. Dr. Fauci did not have any control over drug approval during the HIV/AIDs epidemic and much of the anger of the LGBTQ community was wrongly placed on him because he was at the forefront as Director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases. - https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2020/04/20/how-anthony-fauci-became-americas-doctor

https://www.fda.gov/drugs/development-approval-process-drugs

5a. The Bayh-Dole Act of 1980 allows university and non-profit researchers to retain ownership of patents that result from federally funded research which they may then license those patents to private companies. These private pharmaceutical companies are the only ones that have the staff and resources to turn these ideas into a product. If a university or non-profit research did discover a cure to COVID-19, they would not have the ability to begin mass producing a vaccine without going to a pharmaceutical company. The Bayh-Dole Act actually helps with discovering a vaccine. If that pharmaceutical "company fails to produce a product that has been developed using federal funds, or if it cannot produce sufficient quantities to reasonably satisfy the 'health and safety needs' of the U.S., the government can exercise what are known as 'march-in rights' compelling the patent holder to grant a license under the patent(s) to others." - https://news.bloomberglaw.com/ip-law/insight-ips-role-in-covid-19-tests-treatments-and-vaccines

5b. Dr. Fauci has all his patents assigned to the U.S. government rather than making money off them. All bonus money (only $45,000) was donated. "Dr Anthony Fauci told the BMJ that as a government employee he was required by law to put his name on the patent for the development of interleukin 2 and was also required by law to receive part of the payment the government received for use of the patent. He said that he felt it was inappropriate to receive payment and donated the entire amount to charity." - https://patents.justia.com/inventor/anthony-s-fauci

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC545012/

6. Judy Mikovits claims Bill Gates has killed millions with his global vaccination program. There is no evidence of this. - https://www.news18.com/news/buzz/fact-check-no-india-is-not-suing-bill-gates-for-wrongful-polio-vaccination-deaths-2595499.html

7a. Judy Mikovits claims that there are no vaccines against RNA viruses. RNA viruses are rapidly mutating and therefore tougher to make vaccines against but there are several vaccines for RNA viruses already including rabies, measles, polio, etc.. - https://www.annualreviews.org/doi/10.1146/annurev.mi.41.100187.002205

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK8618/

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5863094/

https://www.who.int/biologicals/areas/vaccines/poliomyelitis/en/


7b. mRNA vaccines are already in trial though and showing promise. "mRNA vaccines would also be safer than the weakened viral or protein-based vaccines because they do not carry the risk of the injected virus becoming active, or a protein contamination." - https://theconversation.com/coronavirus-a-new-type-of-vaccine-using-rna-could-help-defeat-covid-19-133217

8. Judy Mikovits claims to not be anti-vaccine but she has published several anti-vaccine books ("Plague of Corruption" and "Plague") and is a celebrity to the anti-vaccine movement. Even her publisher admits that they are an anti-vaccine publishing company. She is commonly featured on conspiracy websites like InfoWars and Natural News as being someone who believes vaccines cause autism. She has also co-authored books with "vaccines cause autism" advocate Kent Heckenlively and the foreward in her book "Plague of Corruption" is written by notorious anti-vaccine advocate Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

9a. Judy Mikovits claims that the virus "cannot be naturally occurring" and was "manipulated." She claims it experienced "accelerated viral evolution." All of these claims are made without her having access to a research lab and presenting absolutely no proof of these claims. In fact, studies by several nations have shown that the virus developed naturally:

https://www.businessinsider.com/us-allies-intel-likely-coronavirus-from-nature-not-chinese-lab-2020-5

https://directorsblog.nih.gov/2020/03/26/genomic-research-points-to-natural-origin-of-covid-19/

https://www.sciencealert.com/here-s-what-scientists-think-of-the-coronavirus-was-made-in-a-lab-rumour

https://www.euronews.com/2020/03/27/what-we-know-and-don-t-know-about-the-covid-19-coronavirus


9b. A March 17 study in Nature Medicine showed that "SARS-CoV-2 is not a laboratory construct or a purposefully manipulated virus." They concluded that "if genetic manipulation had been performed, one of the several reverse-genetic systems available for betacoronaviruses would probably have been used. However, the genetic data irrefutably show that SARS-CoV-2 is not derived from any previously used virus backbone." - https://www.nature.com/articles/s41591-020-0820-9?fbclid=IwAR3w65RgILi01mVjIMQ2LKeZS4xUkLz5LRBinImTKRPOWSnCqIQWw_hDzR0


10. At ~11:30, a video clip plays claiming that Dr. Anthony Fauci worked with the Chinese laboratory in Wuhan. Dr. Fauci has never stepped foot in Wuhan, China. This stems from the fact that the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases gave $3.7 million dollars to the Wuhan Institute of Virology which was studying the coronavirus in bats. Why was this done? In 2014, there was an accident at the CDC that led to a temporary ban on SARS research until safety concerns were addressed. Rather than let this important research come to an end, Dr. Fauci and the NIAID allowed for the outsourcing of this work with federal funds to the Wuhan Institute of Virology.

http://www.phe.gov/s3/dualuse/Documents/gain-of-function.pdf

https://nationalfile.com/faucis-niaid-funded-wuhan-lab-scientists-to-research-bat-coronavirus/

https://www.foxnews.com/media/gaetz-end-nih-grant-wuhan-virology-lab

https://asiatimes.com/2020/04/why-us-outsourced-bat-virus-research-to-wuhan/



11. Judy Mikovits claims she worked at Fort Detrick in 1999 where she purposely made it so Ebola could infect humans. Ebola has been around since 1976 and has been infecting people ever since. "The first known human cases of Ebola occurred in 1976 during two simultaneous outbreaks in Sudan and the Democratic Republic of Congo, which sickened more than 600 people, according to the World Health Organization."

http://publichealthintelligence.org/content/chronology-ebola-virus-disease-outbreaks-1976-2014

https://www.livescience.com/47946-where-did-ebola-come-from.html

https://www.cdc.gov/vhf/ebola/about.html



12. Judy Mikovits tries to make the claim that COVID-19 deaths are extremely exaggerated because several doctors have questioned the criteria for labeling deaths as COVID-19 related. This includes the video clip of Dr. Dan Erickson making the claim which has already been debunked by medical professionals across the world.

https://respectfulinsolence.com/2020/04/28/erickson-massihi-bogus-epidemiology-covid-19/

https://theprepared.com/blog/dr-ericksons-viral-covid-19-briefing-video-is-dangerously-wrong/



In fact, the death toll from COVID-19 is largely being underestimated as many countries do not have the capability to perform such wide scale testing. Even here in the United States, testing has been a massive failure.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/investigations/2020/05/02/excess-deaths-during-covid-19/?arc404=true



The motive for these gross overestimations? She says it is financial because hospitals receive more money for having COVID-19 patients. While it is true that hospitals have received more federal aid to assist with their COVID-19 patients, "Medicare says it does not make standard, one-size-fits-all payments to hospitals for patients admitted with COVID-19 diagnoses and placed on ventilators. The $13,000 and $39,000 figures appear to be based on generic industry estimates for admitting and treating patients with similar conditions."

https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/medicare-hospitals-covid-patients/



In fact, "There isn't a Medicare diagnostic code specifically for COVID-19. Using payment rates for similar respiratory conditions..." ... "A COVID patient on a ventilator will need more services and more complicated services, not just the ventilator," said Joseph Antos, scholar in health care at the American Enterprise Institute. "It is reasonable that a patient who is on a ventilator would cost three times one who isn't that sick."

https://www.politifact.com/factchecks/2020/apr/21/facebook-posts/Fact-check-Hospitals-COVID-19-payments/



13. Again, Mikovits presents us with a puzzling tale of Italy where the infection rates are higher because of "dog cells" because dogs have "lots of coronaviruses." There is absolutely no research showing this. She continues that the evidence of the origin is in that Italy did no testing. Italy had actually conducted the most tests of any nation by April 20. The only research found between canine coronavirus to human transfer showed that "novel investigations to assess the transmission rate of the canine respiratory coronavirus to humans are needed... Also, care should be taken while evaluating the data on the sole basis of sequence homology and further studies employing purified forms of the spike proteins and/or its epitopes are desired."

https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/full-list-total-tests-for-covid-19

https://www.businessinsider.com/coronavirus-testing-per-capita-us-italy-south-korea-2020-4

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7102648/



14a. Hydroxychloroquine came onto the international scene as a possible cure when French Doctor Didier Raoult took to social media claiming it was curing patients. Raoult's study though was not double-blind and randomized (something that the video demands Fauci do with any vaccine "he" develops). France's drug agency found the same results that many other drug agencies found, that hydroxychloroquine causes "cardiac adverse effects." France, Brazil, Sweden, and many others have all stopped prescribing it after seeing cardiac issues in patients.

https://abcnews.go.com/Health/tracking-hydroxychloroquine-misinformation-unproven-covid-19-treatment-ended/story?id=70074235

https://www.the-scientist.com/news-opinion/journal-publisher-concerned-over-hydroxychloroquine-study-67405



14b. Hydroxychloroquine has been given to patients in the United States, including 368 patients at VA hospitals. 52 of those patients have died. In the study, it = "found no evidence that use of hydroxychloroquine, either with or without azithromycin, reduced the risk of mechanical ventilation in patients hospitalized with Covid-19. An association of increased overall mortality was identified in patients treated with hydroxychloroquine alone."

https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.04.16.20065920v1.full.pdf

https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2020/05/01/hydroxychloroquine-veterans-trump/?arc404=true

https://thehill.com/homenews/administration/495409-va-secretary-defends-use-of-hydroxychloroquine-for-veterans-claims


14c. Results with hydroxychloroquine have been mixed at best. It is not a wonder drug as touted by the video. The most recent study, funded by the NIH and released on May 7, 2020, showed that "hydroxychloroquine administration was not associated with either a greatly lowered or an increased risk of the composite end point of intubation or death" and that "randomized, controlled trials of hydroxychloroquine in patients with Covid-19 are needed."

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/apr/28/australian-hydroxychloroquine-trials-continue-despite-studies-showing-no-benefit-to-coronavirus-patients

https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa2012410



15. Mikovits claims that Suramin was found to be a cure for autism and was taken away by Monsanto. Suramin was actually given in a "small, randomized clinical trial conducted by Robert Naviaux, MD, PhD , professor of medicine, pediatrics and pathology, and colleagues at University of California San Diego School of Medicine have found that a single intravenous dose of suramin produced dramatic, but transient, improvement of core symptoms of autism spectrum disorder (ASD)." https://health.ucsd.edu/news/topics/suramin-autism/pages/default.aspx



Monsanto does not own the patent on Suramin either, it can be obtained from the CDC and is manufactured by Bayer-Germanin.

https://www.cdc.gov/laboratory/drugservice/formulary.html



Further research is being conducted into Suramin by Dr. Naviaux and if it can be used to develop a cure for autism.

https://drugsafetynews.com/2017/08/26/good-news-weekend-new-old-treatment-autism/



16. The interviewer asks Mikovits if natural cures of COVID-19 are being suppressed because they can't be patented and profited off of. Many pharmaceuticals are derived from natural ingredients and pharmaceutical companies make massive profits off them. Most narcotic analgesics like codeine, oxycodone, methadone, etc. are produced from the opium poppy plant and make a large profit for companies.

https://americanaddictioncenters.org/the-big-list-of-narcotic-drugs



17a. Mikovits claims that getting the flu vaccine increases the odds of getting COVID-19 by 36%. There is no data or research showing this at all.

https://www.factcheck.org/2020/04/no-evidence-that-flu-shot-increases-risk-of-covid-19/

https://respectfulinsolence.com/2020/03/31/coronavirus-viral-interference/


17b. Her claim of 36% comes from a January 2020 study on DOD personnel that found an increased risk of being infected with the coronavirus. The coronavirus studied though was the common cold, not COVID-19, and based on one flu season. Another study covered six flu seasons and found there was no association.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/31607599

https://healthfeedback.org/claimreview/claim-that-flu-vaccine-increases-coronavirus-infection-is-unsupported-misinterprets-scientific-studies/

https://academic.oup.com/cid/article/57/6/789/329048


18. She claims that closing the beaches was done to prevent people from accessing the healing properties of the sand and ocean water. A preposterous claim with no scientific backing. While the ocean is being explored for cures to diseases, the idea that bathing in it will cure you of COVID-19 is beyond rational thought.

https://oceantoday.noaa.gov/medicinesfromthesea/

19. There are currently 70 clinical trials of different vaccines and their effects on COVID-19 across the world, some of them in humans. There is no 'single, malicious vaccine' trial being pushed.

https://fortune.com/2020/04/13/who-70-coronavirus-vaccines-human-testing/


20. Dr. Fauci has not been the only one to blow the whistle on a possible coronavirus pandemic. Doctors in Hong Kong, President Barack Obama, Emergency Management Magazine, Dr. Larry Brilliant, and many more have long known that there would be a novel coronavirus pandemic that would require planning, preparation, and a strong response.

Remember to always be critical of the information you receive. Just as sometimes governments and corporations have ulterior motives, so do sometimes those who supposedly speak out against them. In this case, they are trying to sell you their conspiracy theory books.


James F. Chaffee, Jr.

M.A., Emergency Management & Homeland Security

B.A., History


@JimChaffeeEM https://twitter.com/JimChaffeeEM