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A well-produced, clean-cut video depicting an interview with Judy Mikovits has caught interest on social media. But despite the glossy finish, the video has some red flags that should alert viewers to the untrue statements Mikovits tells Mikki Willis.
In a time of a pandemic, the video does little more than attempt to sow distrust and dissuade people from listening to health authorities.
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In the interview, Mikovits claims that she was held in jail with no charges and arrested without a warrant. According to Politifact and NPR, neither of those statements are true. A warrant for Mikovits’ arrest was issued from the police at the University of Nevada, Reno. She was charged with stealing computer data from her former place of employment. These charges were dropped.
Mikki Willis, the director of Plandemic, did not really question Mikovits as she told her story. When a Pro-Publica reporter asked her what she meant, Mikovits said, “I’ve been confused for a decade.”
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Mikovits asserted that COVID-19 was “manipulated” by a laboratory. However, according to LiveScience, experts firmly believe that the virus was not made or engineered in any way.
Researchers found that compared to other strains of coronavirus, COVID-19’s genome did not seem manipulated or to follow the particular patterns that would come with artificial creation.
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According to Politifact, hospitals get $13,000 for admitting patients with COVID-19 and $39,000 for putting a COVID-19 patient on a ventilator. Medicare does not attach a price to death certificates.
The CARES Act passed by Congress gives hospitals a 20% “add-on” for their COVID-19 patients, mostly because these hospitals are quickly losing revenue due to canceling elective surgeries.
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Mikovits claimed that the malaria treatment, touted by the Trump campaign as a possible cure for COVID-19, is effective in treating the virus. The one problem with this statement: it’s not.
A recent study from the New England Journal of Medicine found that “hydroxychloroquine administration was not associated with either a greatly lowered or an increased risk of the composite end point of intubation or death.”
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Mikovits stated that people who received the flu vaccine had a 36% higher risk of catching COVID-19. But this is not true, because COVID-19 is a different strain of virus than influenza. Furthermore, this claim makes no sense because flu vaccines are either an inactive strain or so low that they don’t cause infection.
A study in 2018 found that people who were vaccinated caught coronavirus more often than those who were not. But that study did not focus on COVID-19, and the 36% was added by a conspiracy website later.
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“We’re not sure what a ‘coronavirus expression’ even is,” says Politifact.
Mikovits claimed that wearing masks to protect against infection was hurting, not helping. However, an assistant professor at the University of Massachusetts-Amherst, Richard Peltier, told Politifact, “There is nothing about wearing a mask that would have any biologically relevant impact on viral activity.”
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A ProPublica reporter called Mikki Willis, the director of Plandemic, and asked him if he thought the film fitted the definition of propaganda. “He said he doesn’t feel there’s anything misleading in his film, but otherwise the definition fits,” said Marshall Allen.
Willis then asked, “What isn’t propaganda these days?”
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One of the more confusing claims made by Mikovits was: “Ebola couldn’t infect human cells until we took it into the laboratories and taught [it].” This statement was linked to her claim to work at Fort Detrick’s USAMRIID in 1999, according to NPR.
Ebola had long been able to infect human cells before Mikovits worked at a lab. In Africa, Ebola had killed over 200 people in 1976. Lab assistance was not needed for those deaths.
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While Mikovits states in the film that she is decidedly not anti-vaxx, she is connected to the anti-vaxx community. Her first book, according to the Washington Post, was written with Kent Heckenlively in 2014. Heckenlively is notably anti-vaccine.
Mikovits spoke at the 2014 Autism One conference, hosted by Autism One, an organization founded by Heckenlively.
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Mikovits makes several claims and accusations about Dr. Anthony Fauci, who is framed in the shadiest way possible. However, Beth Skwarecki at Lifehacker pointed out that she never actually makes a statement about Dr. Fauci, connecting him to something tangible.
“It’s never actually connected to anything,” said Skwarecki. Mikovits says Fauci paid off researchers in an attempt to cover something up. But she later clarifies: labs were given funding from the National Institute of Allergies and Infectious Diseases. This is not the same as a pay-off.
