[hook’em]^(-1)
The video is hooey.
here’s a good one.
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I have seen this Plandemic “documentary” shared several times today and I am going to address some points in order of the video and copy/paste them to everyone I see who has shared it with some relevant sourced links. Upon request, I decided to make it a post as well so that it is sharable. If you take the time to watch a 25-minute unsourced video, I hope you find the time to read at least some of my responses. Warning, it’s very long, but I think that’s what it takes to fight the kind of misinformation that these kinds of videos propagate. I tried my best to do a "literature review" from available data and sources. Overall, one of my favorite parts about studying science and medicine is science literacy and explaining concepts.
My overall point with this is that to make such extraordinary claims as those in this video, regardless of topic (science, religion, technology, etc.) you must present extraordinary evidence. Dr. Mikovits and this documentary fail to meet the standard of credibility or provide evidence for her claims. I am wondering why so many people have determined that she is a credible source. Aside from her storied past as a controversial figure who lied in her research and is a prominent pusher of pseudoscience and anti-vaccine claims, this obviously slanted documentary is a hodgepodge of new unverified claims and leading questions. So many of the broad statements that this woman (and the “father/filmaker” [misspelled] interviewer) make are immediately able to be researched and proven wrong. The production is slick and much better than other new propaganda and conspiracy videos but still very easily seen through. The basis is just making unverifiable claims without the sources to back them up so that the viewer has to do a deep dive to prove them wrong. Not many want to take the time. It’s honestly exhausting to look at source after source and dig through. I did it to the best of my ability while combing through several claims made by this video.
A perfect example is literally in the first sentence: “Dr. Judy Mikovits has been called one of the most accomplished scientists of her generation.” By who specifically? Was it any qualified scientist or physician or research colleague? The documentary doesn’t mention that part. A quick Google search of the phrase shows that it was none other than Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., who wrote the intro to her book and is also one of the most prominent pseudoscience and anti-vaccine celebrities and activists with zero credibility make such a resounding statement. He is chairman of the anti-vaccine and Orwellian doublespeak-named “Children’s Health Defense” activist group. Dr. Mikovits is popular with their group.
The intro goes on to mention her published journal article in Science magazine on retroviruses and chronic fatigue syndrome. It then says, “minions of Big Pharma waged a war” against her because she exposed their “dirty secrets”. That’s the justification. No mention of the fact that the reason her paper in Science was later retracted was because it was revealed to be a bad study with unrepeatable results that was based on earlier bad data and contaminated specimens. Even people who worked on the original study with her could not replicate its results. It was then shown that she fudged and misrepresented data. She was later fired for insubordination for not allowing other people to work on similar projects with her.
She claims that she was arrested and held without charges. (Are we even sure that SWAT footage running in the background is from her arrest? It’s not dated or noted in any way.) She was arrested because there was a warrant out for her arrest after she was fired from her lab job at the Whittemore Peterson Institute in Reno, NV. She stole computer data and notebooks from her lab that were not her property and took them to Southern California. The warrant listed two felony charges: “possession of stolen property and unlawful taking of computer data, equipment, supplies or other computer-related property”. If any of us tried to take a computer or work documents when we were fired, we could expect similar results. She says she can prove she didn’t commit the alleged crime but doesn’t mention how.
“Dr. (Anthony) Fauci directed a coverup and everybody else was paid off millions of dollars.” A coverup of what exactly? What is she referencing? She also makes unverified claims about her role with Dr. Fauci, Dr. Robert Gallo, Dr. Robert Redfield, and their work with HIV and AIDS. She said that HIV did not need to be confirmed once it was isolated. She claims that interleukin-2 therapy was wrong without citing any evidence. (To her credit, IL-2 therapy was later proved an ineffective therapy for HIV.) It is not mentioned how these claims are connected or connected to her specifically. She then said that Dr. Fauci owns a patent for some sort of treatment for HIV at the time and made money off of it but isn’t specific as to what patent or how. She further references the Bayh-Dole Act. The law states that the government can retain ownership rights for patents for inventions generated by government-funded research. The US government did patent a process of development of interleukin-2 as a treatment for HIV/AIDS, if that’s what she is referencing? The only investigation I found was that Dr. Fauci told the British Medical Journal that as a government employee who worked on the project, 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.
Dr. Mikovits then claims that “their (whose exactly?) vaccines will kill millions, as they already have” and there are “no vaccines on the market for any RNA viruses that work”. This broad anti-vaccine statement has been disproven over and over again. (See link at the bottom). As far as RNA virus vaccines, Influenza, Measles, Polio, Hepatitis A, and others are all RNA viruses that have vaccines. They work. She then says that she is not anti-vaccine, she is in favor of “immune therapy” because that’s her job, without really drawing a distinction of what she means.
She claims that the virus is not “naturally occurring” and that it’s “very clear that this virus was manipulated,” again without evidence. She does not say how it was manipulated or what differences are that would indicate human tampering with a related virus. Then she says that she is “sure” it was developed between a lab in North Carolina; Fort Detrick, Maryland; and the Wuhan Virology Lab. Again, with no evidence. She, as a trained virologist, could have rebutted any of the numerous sources that discuss the natural progression of the virus, but she chose to just say, “nope” and move on. (Peer-reviewed papers and other relevant sources of virus history and pathogenesis at the bottom.)
She says that Ebola could not infect human cells until she worked on the virus and “taught them how” to infect human cells in 1999. Ebola was first identified in the 1970s and there had already been several outbreaks in humans by this time. I’m not sure what she means that it couldn’t infect humans.
There is a lot of quoting of the two ER physicians from Bakersfield, CA who have been now been discredited due to their lack of sound scientific research methods and statistical analysis, although this didn’t stop them from posting a YouTube broadcast. They also do not mention the fact that they financially benefit by running a chain of urgent care centers (which have taken an economic hit since the closures due to non-COVID medical visits). The American College of Emergency Physicians and the American Academy of Emergency Medicine declared they “emphatically condemn the recent opinions released by Dr. Daniel Erickson and Dr. Artin Messihi. These reckless and untested musings do not speak for medical societies and are inconsistent with current science and epidemiology regarding COVID-19. As owners of local urgent care clinics, it appears these two individuals are releasing biased, non-peer reviewed data to advance their personal financial interests without regard for the public’s health.”
There is an allegation that hospitals will pad their numbers of COVID positive patients. It is standard for Medicare to pay roughly three times more for a patient with a respiratory condition who goes on a ventilator than for one who does not. That has nothing to do with the coronavirus. As part of a federal stimulus bill, Medicare is paying hospitals 20% more than standard rates for COVID-19 patients. Indications are that due to a lack of testing and other factors, the number of coronavirus cases has been undercounted, not padded. She further asserts that ventilators are “the wrong treatment” and killing people. No mention of what she considers the “right treatment” or that plenty of people have survived after going on a ventilator.
She claimed that the reason Italy was hit worse was because they are all old people with inflammatory disorders, and they were given a new strain of flu vaccine last year which caused their sickness. Again, so many broad and unverified claims in that one throwaway sentence, and again not sourced.
Dr. Mikovits touts hydroxychloroquine (HCQ) with azithromycin (AZ) and zinc as a panacea drug combo and says that evidence is not anecdotal. If it’s not published and peer-reviewed, then it is anecdotal. This is the case with claims made by Dr. Vladimir Zelenko and Dr. Didier Raoult, probably the most famous doctors pushing this narrative. They have both given non-published non-peer reviewed accounts about some sort of combination of HCQ and AZ and zinc. The only study in the US showed that patients treated with HCQ actually died at a higher rate than those who weren’t given the drug. Also didn’t make a difference in the need to be ventilated. The study was retrospective, meaning they weren’t testing the drug directly, they were looking at outcomes of patients who had been treated. To be fair, a major randomized trial of chloroquine had to be stopped because of high fatality rates from cardiac toxicity (and another stopped in Sweden due to headaches and vision loss.) A study from China showed no effectiveness with HCQ treatment. Granted, there is almost certainly selection bias in the US study. (Bias, not as in for an agenda, but in the statistical sense of the word due to available data.) There were 385 patients who were hospitalized with confirmed SARS-CoV-2 infection across the US and either died or were discharged as of April 11, 2020 after receiving HCQ or HCQ+AZ in the VA Health System, so that’s whose information was compiled. They say that they realize that the drug was usually only administered to very sick patients, but that was not in their control. Overall, they mention several limitations in the paper, saying that they then adjusted for including comorbidities, medications, clinical and laboratory abnormalities. But that would still not necessarily eliminate selection bias. However, for Dr. Mikovits to say that it hasn’t been researched or that it’s being taken off the market by Big Pharma would be a lie. It’s not recommended by the American Medical Association because it’s hurting or killing too many people in the studies. They are trying to figure out ways to make it safe.
She also uses the point about Big Pharma pushing out her(?) research with autism and suramin. It isn’t true that the drug is unavailable. Studies are ongoing and the study mentioned was to try to find a mechanism of physiological and pharmacological action of a drug and its effect on chemical receptors involved in the stress response. It was not to test to find a “cure for autism” or anything of the sort. I’m not sure which trial she is touting but the most discussed one is one that only featured 10 boys, 5 of which were given the drug. That is not enough data to extrapolate from and the study authors say more research is needed.
Dr. Mikovits claims, “flu vaccines increased the odds by 36% of getting COVID-19.” This is the one time she is asked where her data came from and she points to a paper published last year that (she says) described that members of the military were more susceptible to coronaviruses after receiving the flu vaccine. This is another huge claim pushed by Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.,
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