This week, a newly-released propaganda documentary calledPlandemicwent viral on the internet, claiming to offer "the hidden agenda behind COVID-19." Composed of 26 minutes of fantastic, demonstrably-false claims by broadly-discredited doctors and scientists, it managed to collect tens of millions of views. YouTube and Facebook's efforts to take the video down from their platforms for violating medical misinformation policies were stymied by near-continuous re-posts on various channels, adding to the conspiracy-theory frenzy by implying that Big Tech was in on it too.

I was first forwarded a link to the video on Wednesday morning and throughout the day it kept appearing in emails, texts, direct messages and even my neighborhood’s Nextdoor page, promoted as some revelatory, game-changing answer to our current crisis. Having been familiar with its protagonist–a discredited research scientist popular on the anti-vaxxer scene–I was initially dismissive, chalking it up to just one more crazy offering from the lunatic fringe. By that evening, however, I took a lengthy scroll through my Facebook feed and noticed that at least one in every five posts were from friends and followers who'd shared the video from YouTube channels (which understates its popularity, as Facebook's algorithm is widely known to disfavor the Google-owned platform) with enthusiastic proclamations that I "must watch beforetheytake it down!"

Plandemicopens with ominous musical tones and the claim that Dr. Judy Mikovits is known as "one of the most accomplished scientists of her generation," whose 1991 doctoral thesisrevolutionizedthe treatment of HIV/AIDS–neither of which are actually true. But the video gives the appearance of a journalistic interview, not unlike that which you'd see on a show like 60 Minutes and after it spends its opening scene and initial 10 minutes of screen time establishing Dr. Mikovits as a credible top tier scientist, it describes a fantastical story of a woman who, at the height of her career, was smeared by Big Government, Big Pharma and other bad actors, set up for a crime she didn't commit, while pretty much every civil right of hers was violated in an effort to silence her from revealing "the truth."

Everything is presented without evidence, of course, but because the person conducting the interview makes it seem like he's asking tough questions or just reporting what are already settled facts, viewers are drawn into a compelling story. At the height of her career, we're told, Mikovits published a controversial article in the journal Science that "sent shock waves through the scientific community," revealing that the common use of animal and human fetal tissues in laboratories (presumably through vaccines) were releasing "plagues of chronic diseases." Again, neither are true. The paper merely claimed to demonstrate a possible link between one condition and a mouse retrovirus. It turned out there was no such link, and the article was retracted.

According to the video, however, Mikovits supposedly made a groundbreaking discovery that "didn't fit the chosen narrative," andtheydestroyed her for it. For exposing their deadly secrets, we are told, "the minions of Big Pharma waged war" on the good doctor. "Now, as the fate of nations hangs in the balance, Dr. Mikovits is naming names of those behind the plague of corruption that places all human life in danger!" The fact that the "filmaker" couldn't spell filmmaker in the first frame after the intro raised another big red flag for me.

The story begins to expand into a veritable greatest hits list of the YouTube conspiracy theory genre, baking in popular conspiracy subjects to both broaden its audience and expand the confirmation biases of those watching. If someone comes into it thinking the Illuminati has been pulling the strings of American society for a century or more, there's something for them. Without mentioning the word, it nods to that demographic with its early mention of the Rockefellars (supposed members) interest in vaccines (triggering another massive contingent) and implying that Mikovits' early statements on animal and fetal tissues are in vaccines, which is left out by the narrator.

We are led to believe that Mikovits was part of an elite team that made an important HIV/AIDS discovery that was silenced by none other than Dr. Anthony Fauci of CORVID-19 White House Press Conference fame, another target of a litany of conspiracies from the far right-wing, ticking yet another box and confirming additional crossover bias about the Deep State. Fauci and another scientist supposedly stymied the AIDS work so that he could steal credit and secure valuable patents, enriching themselves at the cost of millions of lives that were lost to their foot-dragging, another demonstrably-false statement with no evidence presented. Mikovits' dramatic assertions, however, again go challenged, unlike in a real interview.

Fauci returns when the story picks up more than a decade later, after Mikovits'shock-waveinducing discovery, claiming evidence thatchronic fatigue syndromeis caused by a retrovirus. Like a scene straight out of a Hollywood blockbuster, Mikovits claims she was framed for theft of intellectual property, arrested after a warrantless search turned up materials that had been planted in her home (we see dramatic stock SWAT footage that does not comport with the actual events of her arrest), held without bail despite never being charged, and was then bankrupted despite perfect credit. It never explains exactly how the nefarious cabal bankrupted her, only that the purpose was to prevent her from calling Fauci and the rest of her 97 high-profile witnesses who would beforcedto tell the truth at trial.

Mikovits says she was then placed under a vague "gag order," and a threat that were she to ever say anything in the news, on social media, or anywhere else,theywould drum up new charges, plant new evidence and send her right back to the can. But, with that gag order now lifted–the "filmaker" (sic) never asks how–she's now here torisk it allin order to save the world–andpromote a new book she's recently released with co-author and quite possibly the world's most notorious anti-vaxxer,Kent Heckenlively. If that's not enough, there's also a foreword by the world'smost notable anti-vaxxer, Robert Kennedy Jr. But again, unless one is familiar with all of this, which isn't disclosed in the interview, it probably wouldn't raise a flag.

In reality, Mikovits earned a bachelor's degree in chemistry and did some respectable research work until earning a Ph.D. in Biochemistry and Molecular Biology at George Washington University in 1992, publishing a thesis entitled Negative Regulation of HIV Expression in Monocytes. However, it in no wayrevolutionizedthe field. Her claim tothe patent filed by Fauciin the video doesn't hold water either, as the patent referenced relates mostly to leukemia treatment and specifically notes that no successful treatment for HIV/AIDS was found.

As for the profit motive, Mikovits references theBayh-Dole Act, which she claims "destroyed science" by allowing federal grant recipients (including those working for federal agencies) the right to apply for patents on their inventions. In actuality, non-profits already had that right and the law expanded it to contractors and other grant workers, including those in the government. Like most every scientist working for someone else, however, Dr. Fauci and other employees on federal contracts have assignment stipulations that specify their share in a percent of royalties. In the case of the National Institute of Health, that is very small, with the vast majority returning to the agency to be distributed in grants to fund more research. At the time, the limit at NIH was capped at $150,000 per year, though the average payment was under $10,000.

Fauci's patent yielded only $45,000 over 8 years ($5,600 per year), which he initially declined, though the agency determined it was contractually obligated to disperse the share, at which point he said he'd decided to donate it to charity, according to anews articlepublished at that time. As for Gates standing to makehundreds of billionsoff of patents being the motivation for his involvement in vaccinating developing countries, as the video implies, it would be the foundation and its scientists that received such patents, according to their assignment agreements. Worth more than a hundred billion dollars already, it's hard to imagine the 64-year-old Microsoft founder using so much of his wealth and remaining time on Earth to advance world health, just to somehow clean up financially on the back end.

For Mikovits' part, she did publish that one noteworthyarticlein her career, which appeared in the journalScienceback in 2010 and claimed evidence that a certain kind of RNA virus caused chronic fatigue syndrome, a mystifying disorder with no approved treatments or cure that continues to baffle scientists. Ribonucleic acid (RNA) is a polymeric molecule essential in various biological roles in the coding, decoding, regulation and expression of genes. An RNA virus is simply one that has ribonucleic acid as its genetic material, and a retrovirus is a type that inserts a copy of its genome into the DNA of a host cell that it invades, thus changing the genome of that cell. According to Mikovits, however, "There is no vaccine for any RNA virus that works." It's hard to imagine that "one of the most accomplished scientists of her generation," wouldn't be awarethat there isa vaccine for polio or measles, as well as many other RNA viruses?

According to aNew York Times articlewritten after the article's publication, Mikovits left the National Cancer Institute "in 2001 to get married and move to California, where she went to work for a drug development company that failed. She was tending bar at a yacht club when a patron said her constant talk about viruses reminded him of someone he knew in Nevada." That someone was a friend of the Whittemores, a wealthy couple in Nevada. Harvey Whittemore, an attorney/businessman, and his wife Annette had a daughter who suffered from chronic fatigue syndrome. The couple poured millions of dollars into the Whittemore-Peterson Institute for Neuro-Immune Disease, a nonprofit on the campus of the University of Reno that would research a cure.

The Whittemores went on to hire Mikovits as the institute's research director. While Mikovits did bring two decades of research experience related to viruses, she had no background in CFS, an odd omission for a director at an institute of that scale, especially someone who'd been out of medical research for half a decade and had most recently been a bartender when they were introduced. Nevertheless, Mikovits was hired in 2006, and after meeting Dr. Daniel L. Peterson, whose work at the time showed that some of his chronic fatigue syndrome patients developed a rare form of lymphoma, Mikovits seems to have concluded that it must be a retrovirus causing the disorder.

One of her first studies looked for XMRV (xenotropic murine leukemia virus-related virus) in blood samples from people with chronic fatigue syndrome and from healthy control subjects. XMRV is a mouse retrovirus that can replicate in the cells of other animals. According to her published article, 67 percent of the samples from CFS patients were infected with it, while only 3.7 percent of the healthy controls were. Thus, she and her co-authors suggested that XMRV may cause or at least contribute to CFS. Mikovits then changed the detection criteria andclaimedfurther testing conducted after theSciencearticle was published showed that 90 percent of the CFS samples were infected, which made it seem even more conclusive.

Obviously, such a groundbreaking assertionwoulddraw attention, but there were immediate criticisms of poorly-described methods in the study and soon afterward there were allegations that samples thatappeared to be duplicated. Then, three independent studies attempting to replicate Mikovits' results failed to find evidence of XMRV in the samples of CFS patients or the control samples. Anine-center studywas then set up to attempt to confirm Mikovits' preliminary results with replicate samples from 15 subjects reported to be positive and 15 previously determined to be negative distributed, blind, to nine laboratories. Only two labs reported any evidence of the virus, though replicate sample results disagreed, and there was no difference between the CFS samples and the controls.

Following those results,Sciencepublished an "editorial expression of concern." The article noted the failure of all replication efforts and referred to a study noting that while XMRV had been detected in human prostate tumors and blood samples from patients with CFS, all efforts to replicate the findings had failed. Thestudy of cell linesat different phases showed to a near certainty that XMVR was caused by laboratory contamination during recombination in mice. At that point, the scientific communityunderstoodthat Mikovits' results were, at best, owed to her detection of a laboratory contaminant in her samples and her ensuing assumption of a role it didn't actually play.Sciencelater made afull retractionof the article. It wasn't hidden. It was retracted. That's what happens to studies that turn out to be either rigged or otherwise false.

Mikovits was fired from the Whittemore-Peterson Institute when she refused to allow a colleague access to cell lines. Her contract with the institute included the standard stipulation that all research, data and materials were and would always remain the institute's property. When she left, however, the institute discovered that laboratory notebooks and flash drives containing years of research had gone missing from a locked lab cabinet.

Institute officials reported the theft to the University of Nevada police department. During their investigation, a research assistant who was also a tenant of Mikovits' gave asworn affidavitacknowledging that he stole the notebooks from the institute at her behest and delivered them to Mikovits before she and her husband left town for California, where the couple owned a home. Based on his sworn statement, an arrest warrant for Mikovits, as well as one for a search of her California residence, were indeed issued. A second researcher also provided a sworn affidavit after Mikovits' arrest, swearing that she too had been asked by Mikovits to remove laboratory samples and other materials and had refused.

Despite what she says in the video,Mikovits wasin factchargedwhen she was arrested–with two felonies–one for possession of stolen property and another for unlawful taking of computer data, equipment, supplies, or other computer-related property. She was extradited to Nevada after waiving her opportunity for an extradition hearing following the discovery of a computer, 18 lab books and other data belonging to the Whittemore Institute in her California home during a search that was conductedwitha warrant.

Most of the materials were returned to the institute and the criminal charges were later dismissed pending the civil trial–though without prejudice–meaning they could be brought back, which is what Mikovits was apparently referring to in the video, in terms of being thrown back injail if she toldthe truth. Following the civil trial, which Mikovits predictably lost, she was ordered to pay attorney fees and other damages to the institute for stealing data that she knew didn't belong to her (not all of which was recovered), andthatis what led her to file bankruptcy.

In other sworn affidavits from the research assistant that Mikovits had take the lab materials, he revealed that she had told him she was going to get at least half of the $1.5 million in grants the institute had coming to it from É wait for it É the National Institute for Allergy and Infectious Disease, which is headed by none other than Dr. Anthony Fauci! At this point, the first three efforts to replicate her finding had already failed, so Dr. Fauci understandably insisted that additional peer-reviewed research of her claim linking XMRV to CFS be conducted before that research money would be doled out.

It was Dr. Fauci who then commissioned the previously-mentioned nine center trial–the title ofthe resulting paperproclaiming "Multicenter Blinded Analysis Indicates No Association between Chronic Fatigue Syndrome/Myalgic Encephalomyelitis and either Xenotropic Murine Leukemia Virus-Related Virus or Polytropic Murine Leukemia Virus." Hence Mikovits' beef with Dr. Fauci and the basis for all of the demonstrably-false claims she's now making about the doctor who's currently under a global spotlight–surely, much to Mikovits' chagrin.

InPlandemic, Mikovits claims she'snotan anti-vaxxer in what is feigned to be the only tough, "at this point, Ihaveto ask" hardball question the "filmaker" (sic) attempts. However, Mikovits has been long associated with the movement, which itself was created by another discredited and retracted study, one that is believed to have beendeliberately alteredto achieve its result.

Despite endless efforts, including numerous studies funded by groups who purport that thereisa link, no study haseverbeen able to replicate the results or findany link whatsoeverbetween vaccines and autism. Nevertheless, many families, frustrated by the failures of science to explain the disorder, cling to the hope that the theory provides an elusive answer. The same can be said of Mikovits' effect on CFS, which maintains a similar movement among those suffering from an equally-mystifying condition.

In a 2009interviewwith David Kirby, author of the infamous anti-vaccine bookEvidence of Harm, Mikovits speculated on a link between viruses and the disorder, saying, "This might even explain why vaccines would lead to autism in some children, because these viruses live and divide and grow in lymphocytes–the immune response cells, the B and the T cells. So when you give a vaccine, you send your B and T cells in your immune system into overdrive. That's its job. Well, if you are harboring one virus, and you replicate it a whole bunch, you've now broken the balance between the immune response and the virus..."

"So there you have it," mused Kirby, "a possible explanation of regressive autism in a significant number of cases..."

Mikovits has been a darling of the movement ever since, and the viral video will surely only renew their interest in her–and the book.

InPlandemic, Mikovits goes on to claim that the SARS-CoV-2 virus definitely came from a lab (entirely possible though, again, no proof is offered here or elsewhere) and was definitely deliberately altered, which the top epidemiologists in the world agree is, at this point at least, unknowable and otherwise unlikely. More dangerously, she claims that wearing masks would kill more people than the disease itself because their infected air bouncing off of the mask and back into the already-infected person's mouth would somehow make them even sicker with the disease they already have.

The statement on masks was the particular claim that gotPlandemicbounced off of social media platforms and YouTube for violating user terms by spreading dangerous medical misinformation. Understand that, private companies are taking a video off of their platforms, not because they're part of a conspiracy, but because it violates their policy of not being able to peddle dangerous medical advice. They should be applauded for that, not vilified.

The mask angle is followed by footage of discredited Bakersfield, CA doctors Daniel Erickson and Artin Massihi, who also released a viral video laced with disinformation that's since been taken down, claiming that shelter in place, hand-washing and mask-wearing were suppressing everyone's immunity, all of which Mikovits would have us believe is part of thePlandemic.

Erickson says, "Now that we have the facts, it's time to get back to work," in the video that has been shared millions of times on social media platforms. Both the American College of Emergency Physicians and the American Academy of Emergency Medicinecondemned the two doctors' "reckless and untested musings," suggesting that their ownership of urgent care clinics was the motive for releasing "biased, non-peer reviewed data to advance their personal financial interests without regard for the public’s health."

"When I'm writing up my death report, I'm being pressured to add COVID," Erickson claims in the video, feeding into yet another conspiracy theory, even though it doesn't appear he's signed any "death reports," during the crisis. The video usesdistorted and inaccurateinformation about Medicare coding and payment data that is highly misleading at best and doesn't explain that some of the payments to providers are part of the CARE Act's component that removes some co-payments for the patient. The two doctors have since become TV stars, appearing on wing-nut programs and getting their signal raised via shares from notable celebs who've advocated for less stringent stay-at-home measures.

The last portion of the video devolves into the absurd, as Mikovits, sporting the same calm and professional demeanor, continues to amp up the outrageousness of her claims with more demonstrably-false statements that, while off-the-deep-end to medical professionals have mostly gone unquestioned by viewers drawn into the hoax. In a scene that evokes the movie Outbreak, she claims that she worked in a military-sponsored laboratory where they engineered Ebola to be able to infect humans, something she says the disease couldn't do previously. The first Ebola outbreak, however, was discovered in humansin 1976–when she was a teenager! Again the demonstrably-absurd statement goes unchallenged.

Mikovits also makes a claim in the video that flu vaccines are rendering people more susceptible to the disease, quoting a Department of Defense study published last year that actuallyreportstheoppositeresult of what she purports in the video. Furthermore, she makes thepatently–false claimthat all flu vaccines contain coronaviruses, made up whole cloth, but like every other false statement in the video, it goes unchallenged.

A number of homemade cell phone videos made by people we are to presume to be doctors battling the disease are inter-cut, only there's more misleading presentation. For instance, we are not told that the most full-throated rant is delivered not by a medical doctor but by a chiropractor namedEric Nepute, who is described on his viral YouTube video as a "real doctor telling it like it is." Nepute, get ready for this, advocates using Schweppes tonic water to treat COVID-19 because it has "a ton of quinine in it" (it doesn't), and he thinks quinine is a miracle cure of some sort (it isn't).

Nepute'scredibilityis used to introduce chloroquine (you knew it was coming), the anti-malaria/lupus drug that was the subject of yet anothercompletely discredited studyand has been pushed as a COVID cure by other medical experts on about the same level, including Dr. Oz and non-doctors likeLaura Ingrahamand Rudy Giuliani. Mikovits goes on to note that it's been approved and listed as one of our essential drugs in the national stockpile for 70 years, failing to explain that's because of its use for its use against malariaand that every credible study has shownno discernable efficacyyet discovered for COVID-19, as well as the risk of serious heart complications. As such, the FDArecently warnedagainstits use as a COVID treatment.

If the disinformation inPlandemicwasn't so dangerous, this would be just another steaming pile of YouTube horse dung, one of hundreds of thousands, perhaps even millions of low-grade propaganda videos for the tinfoil hat crowd to pass around on Facebook and Twitter. But by fomenting uncertainty among a public that is desperate for answers, many of which simply aren't yet available despite unprecedented scientific effort, Mikovits and her "filmaker" (sic) are playing a dangerous game in order to hawk books and collect clicks.

Last Friday, a Detroit-area security guard wasshot and killedafter a confrontation with a customer he refused entry to at a Dollar General store for not wearing a mask, in compliance with a state order. On Wednesday, two McDonald’s employees in Oklahoma City wereshot by a customerwho was angry that its dining area had been closed off because of the pandemic.

Science, like all other fields, has one major inherent flaw: it's conducted by human beings who are indeed fallible. While the vast majority of scientists and doctors are decent, dedicated, well-meaning professionals, there are occasional quacks, frauds and hucksters who cut corners, fake results and peddle poppycock cures and treatments to the detriment of both society and its trust in the field itself. However, the only exposure of such people inPlandemicis via the characters it relies on to form its preposterous narrative.

Why should I believe you and not her?, I've been asked by some people this week.She's the one with a Ph.D.Fair enough, but I'm not asking you to believe me,personally, with no evidence, the way Mikovits is. I'm asking you to believe the mountain of evidence through links to scholarly articles and studies I've provided from non-discredited scientists that contradict every assertion, over a propaganda video by a person you now know has long been validly discredited in her supposed field of expertise.

Not good enough? I'll ask you this. Occam's Razor: what's more probable, that all of the tens of thousands of doctors and scientists fighting COVID-19 are involved in the most elaborate hoax the world has ever seen,orthat this one discredited woman is involved in an absurdly-transparent one so that she can sell more books?