[D66] Column: Plandemic 2 is another COVID-19 conspiracy theory video (3)

[Dr. Marc-Alexander Fluks]

Bron:  Health Feedback
Datum: 20 augustus 2020
URL:   
https://healthfeedback.org/plandemic-indoctornation-rehashes-debunked-claims-and-conspiracy-theories-about-the-covid-19-pandemic-and-vaccines/


'Plandemic: Indoctornation' video rehashes debunked claims and
conspiracy theories about the COVID-19 pandemic and vaccines
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Plandemic is a pseudo-documentary produced by American filmmaker Mikki 
Willis, whose first instalment was published in May 2020. Featuring an 
interview with anti-vaccination activist and former scientist Judy 
Mikovits, the video peddled numerous false claims and conspiracy 
theories about the COVID-19 pandemic and vaccines (see Health Feedback's 
review of that video). It achieved immense virality and racked up 
millions of views in days, culminating in the removal of the video from 
social media platforms for spreading medical misinformation, although 
copies can still be found online.

The second instalment titled 'Plandemic: Indoctrination' was released on 
18 August 2020. Its main suggestion is that the COVID-19 pandemic was a 
large conspiracy planned by a few individuals and organizations seeking 
to profit from it. Like its predecessor, it contains several false and 
misleading claims about the COVID-19 pandemic and vaccines, many of 
which have already been debunked by fact-checkers. These claims were 
made by Willis, along with internal medicine specialist Meryl Nass, 
virologist and Nobel laureate Luc Montagnier, and the vice chair and 
general counsel of the anti-vaccination group Children's Health Defense 
Mary Holland.


Review

Claim 1:
Nass: 'I feel quite convinced that this was a laboratory designed 
organism [...] I was particularly interested in a paper that came out in 
Nature Medicine, by five scientists, claiming it was definitely a 
natural occurrence than a lab construct. But the arguments they used did 
not hold water, they didn't make a lot of scientific sense.'

Montagnier: 'No, [SARS-CoV-2 is] not natural, it was the work of 
professionals, of molecular biologists. It's a very meticulous job, we 
can say of precision, if you look at the sequences.'

The claim that the virus was manmade has been repeated ever since the 
beginning of the pandemic but remains unsupported by evidence. Although 
scientists are still working to find out exactly where the virus 
SARS-CoV-2 came from, the prevailing scientific consensus is that it 
originated in wildlife and later managed to make a leap to humans 
(zoonotic infection).

Indeed, zoonotic infections are not only plausible but common throughout 
the world, and have also caused outbreaks in the past. For example, the 
SARS outbreak, which began in 2002, was linked to civet cats. Outbreaks 
of Middle East respiratory syndrome have been linked to contact with 
camels, while mosquitoes transmit viruses such as Zika, dengue, and 
chikungunya. In fact, according to the World Health Organization, about 
60% of emerging diseases are zoonotic infections.

Scientists have considered the hypothesis that the virus is a laboratory 
construct, but genetic analysis of the virus has failed to provide any 
evidence that the virus was engineered. Health Feedback previously 
published an Insight article examining the evidence for various 
hypotheses explaining the origin of SARS-CoV-2, which found that the 
weight of the scientific evidence indicates that the virus has a natural 
origin.

Nass refers to a Nature Medicine study published by Anderson et al. in 
March 2020[1]. Their investigation focused mainly on the so-called spike 
(S) protein, which is located on the surface of the enveloping membrane 
of SARS-CoV-2. The S protein allows the virus to bind to and infect 
animal cells. After the 2003-2005 SARS outbreak, researchers identified 
a set of key amino acids within the S protein which give SARS-CoV-1 a 
super-affinity for the ACE2 target receptor located on the surface of 
human cells[2,3].

Surprisingly, the S protein of SARS-CoV-2 does not contain this optimal 
set of amino acids[1], yet is nonetheless able to bind ACE2 with a 
greater affinity than SARS-CoV-1[4]. Taken together, these findings 
strongly suggest that SARS-CoV-2 evolved independently of human 
intervention and undermine the claim that it was manmade[5]. This is 
because if scientists had attempted to engineer improved ACE2 binding in 
a coronavirus, the best strategy would have been to harness the 
already-known and efficient amino acid sequences described in SARS-CoV-1 
in order to produce a more optimal molecular design for SARS-CoV-2. The 
authors of the Nature Medicine study[1] concluded that 'Our analyses 
clearly show that SARS-CoV-2 is not a laboratory construct or a 
purposefully manipulated virus.'

Nass claims that 'the arguments they used did not hold water, they 
didn't make a lot of scientific sense,' but at no point does she explain 
why Anderson et al. did not 'make a lot of scientific sense'. Given the 
lack of supporting evidence for her claim, Nass' statement is a baseless 
assertion which is misleadingly presented as fact.

Montagnier's statements were made during an April 2020 news broadcast in 
France, which has been fact-checked by Health Feedback. His claim is 
based on the now-retracted preprint which was uploaded to bioRxiv on 2 
February 2020. A preprint is a study in progress that has not been 
peer-reviewed by other scientists. The authors of the preprint claimed 
to have found unique 'HIV insertions' in SARS-CoV-2.

Experts later pointed out that the authors only compared very short 
protein regions of the coronavirus with HIV and that these protein 
sequences can also be found in many other organisms, including 
Cryptosporidium and Plasmodium malariae, which cause cryptosporidiosis 
and malaria. In other words, the presence of these sequences do not 
indicate that the coronavirus was genetically engineered and published 
studies have now shown that SARS-CoV-2 does not carry inserts from 
HIV[6,7].

Scientists have repeatedly explained that there is no evidence to 
support the claim that the virus was human engineered. In a statement 
published on 19 February in The Lancet, 27 eminent public health 
scientists in the U.S., Europe, the U.K., Australia, and Asia cited 
numerous studies from multiple countries which 'overwhelmingly conclude 
that this coronavirus originated in wildlife as have so many other 
emerging pathogens.'

An announcement by the U.S. Office of the Director of National 
Intelligence, published on 30 April 2020, echoes the conclusions of 
these scientists, stating that 'The Intelligence Community also concurs 
with the wide scientific consensus that the COVID-19 virus was not 
manmade or genetically modified.'


Claim 2:

Willis: 'Anthony Fauci knew early as January of 2017 that we would see 
an outbreak before the end of 2020. Even Bill Gates, a man with no 
medical training, knew it was coming.'

Willis references Event 201, a pandemic preparedness exercise, and 
misleadingly claims that public health officials and Bill Gates had 
foreknowledge of the pandemic. The association between the outbreak and 
Event 201 has been debunked by several fact-checkers, including 
PolitiFact, Full Fact, FactCheck.org, and Health Feedback. The claim 
that preparedness exercises would be a proof that people were planning 
the pandemic is illogical. By this reasoning, preparedness exercises for 
hurricanes would be evidence that those leading them are creating 
hurricanes.

Event 201 was held jointly by the Johns Hopkins Center for Health 
Security, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, and the World Economic 
Forum. The goal of the exercise was to 'illustrate areas where 
public/private partnerships will be necessary during the response to a 
severe pandemic in order to diminish large-scale economic and societal 
consequences.' Due to the occurrence of the event only a few months 
before the global COVID-19 outbreak started, many have speculated that 
the exercise had already predicted the pandemic. The Johns Hopkins 
Center for Health Security has clarified that no predictions were made 
during the exercise and that the parameters used in modeling their 
hypothetical virus did not resemble the characteristics of SARS-CoV-2: 
'For the scenario, we modeled a fictional coronavirus pandemic, but we 
explicitly stated that it was not a prediction. Instead, the exercise 
served to highlight preparedness and response challenges that would 
likely arise in a very severe pandemic. We are not now predicting that 
the [SARS-CoV-2] outbreak will kill 65 million people. Although our 
tabletop exercise included a mock novel coronavirus, the inputs we used 
for modeling the potential impact of that fictional virus are not 
similar to [SARS-CoV-2].'


Claim 3:

Holland: 'In 2009, tribal children were administered the HPV vaccine. 
Over 24,000 girls were told they were being given wellness shots, in 
many cases without the informed consent of their parent or guardian. 
[...] And these girls became severely injured. Some of them developed 
seizures, some of them developed cancer. And 7 girls died. [...] And it 
was so bad, that the Parliament in India created a task force, they 
studied it, and they kicked out the Gates Foundation.'

Holland parrots a false claim that has already been debunked by other 
fact-checkers at PolitiFact, Reuters, and Snopes. Clinical trials have 
shown that the HPV vaccine has an excellent safety profile and no 
association with autoimmune and neurological diseases has been found, as 
Health Feedback reported in this review. Furthermore, the HPV vaccine 
has been found to reduce the transmission of HPV and the incidence of 
cervical pre-cancer[8-10].

The Indian government opened an investigation into the seven deaths that 
occurred after the HPV vaccination campaign and concluded that none of 
the deaths were causally related to the vaccine. In 2013, Science 
reported: 'State investigations absolved the trial's managers-PATH and 
the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) in New Delhi-of 
responsibility in the deaths. Five were evidently unrelated to the 
vaccine: One girl drowned in a quarry; another died from a snake bite; 
two committed suicide by ingesting pesticides; and one died from 
complications of malaria. The causes of death for the other two girls 
were less certain: one possibly from pyrexia, or high fever, and a 
second from a suspected cerebral hemorrhage. Government investigators 
concluded that pyrexia was 'very unlikely' to be related to the vaccine, 
and likewise they considered a link between stroke and the vaccine as 
'unlikely.''

And contrary to Holland's claim, the Gates Foundation continues to work 
in India. The Indian government also made a public statement in 2017 
(archived) confirming that the '[Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation] 
continues to collaborate and support the Ministry of Health and Family 
Welfare.'


Claim 4:

Willis: 'A 2018 scientific study released in the International Journal 
of Environmental Research and Public Health concluded that over 490,000 
children in India developed paralysis as a result of the Gates-supported 
oral polio vaccine, that was administered between the years of 2000 and 
2017.'

Willis bases his claim on a study titled 'Correlation between Non-Polio 
Acute Flaccid Paralysis Rates and Pulse Polio Frequency in India' by 
Dhiman et al[11]. His claim echoes another that has been traced back to 
anti-vaccination activist Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and found to be false by 
PolitiFact and AFP Fact Check.

The title of the study alone contradicts Willis' claim, as the term 
'non-polio acute flaccid paralysis' (NFAFP) means that the paralysis was 
not caused by polio. Cases of non-polio acute flaccid paralysis have 
been traced back to other viruses such as enteroviruses[12]. In the 
study, the authors noted a correlation between the number of doses of 
the oral polio vaccine and the incidence of NPAFP. This led them to 
hypothesize that 'the frequency of pulse polio administration is 
directly or indirectly related to the incidence of NPAFP.'

However, the study is purely correlative and does not provide conclusive 
evidence of a causal association as Willis claims. The authors 
themselves state that 'It is crucial to note that a mere association 
with regression analyses does not prove a causal relationship. 
Aggregated variables examining cross-sectional data which have no 
bearing on what happens to individuals can result in ecological 
fallacies, and necessitates more in-depth analyses.'

It is important to note that the oral polio vaccine uses a weakened 
strain of poliovirus that can regain its ability to cause disease (see 
Health Feedback's previous review of a news report about vaccine-derived 
polio). This occurs when the weakened strain circulates within a 
population with low rates of immunization for a prolonged period of 
time. According to the World Health Organization:
'On rare occasions, if a population is seriously under-immunized, an 
excreted vaccine-virus can continue to circulate for an extended period 
of time. The longer it is allowed to survive, the more genetic changes 
it undergoes. In very rare instances, the vaccine-virus can genetically 
change into a form that can paralyse - this is what is known as a 
circulating vaccine-derived poliovirus (cVDPV).
It takes a long time for a cVDPV to occur. Generally, the strain will 
have been allowed to circulate in an un- or under-immunized population 
for a period of at least 12 months. Circulating VDPVs occur when routine 
or supplementary immunization activities (SIAs) are poorly conducted and 
a population is left susceptible to poliovirus, whether from 
vaccine-derived or wild poliovirus. Hence, the problem is not with the 
vaccine itself, but low vaccination coverage. If a population is fully 
immunized, they will be protected against both vaccine-derived and wild 
polioviruses.'

Data from the World Health Organization show that between 2000 and 2017, 
there were 17 cases of VDPV.


Claim 5:

Willis: 'In partnership with MIT, Bill Gates has developed a new 
technology that allows vaccines to be injected under your skin, along 
with all your medical records. The quantum dot tattoo will implant an 
invisible certificate that can be scanned by authorities using a 
cellphone app and infrared light.'

This is a reference to a study by researchers at the Massachusetts 
Institute of Technology, funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates 
Foundation, which explored a potential technology for delivering 
vaccines together with biocompatible microparticles[13]. This would 
theoretically enable accurate vaccination records to be maintained in 
regions with low levels of healthcare resources.

However, this technology does not involve the implanting of medical 
records or an 'invisible certificate', as claimed. This study has also 
been cited in the unfounded conspiracy theory that vaccines would be 
used to microchip and surveil people, also covered by fact-checks from 
the BBC, Reuters, and Snopes.


Claim 6:

Willis: 'According to the NIH website, programs are being developed to 
allow human immunization via mosquito bites. It was Science magazine 
that coined the phrase 'flying syringes'.'

Willis references a news article by Science published more than a decade 
ago in March 2010, which reported a proof-of-concept study in Japan by 
Yamamoto et al. that examined the use of mosquitoes to deliver vaccines 
in animal models[14].

His claim is inaccurate and clearly contradicted by the report, since 
the researchers behind the study acknowledged that this method cannot be 
used for human immunization. According to the Science article: 'There's 
a huge variation in the number of mosquito bites one person received 
compared with the next, so people exposed to the transgenic mosquitoes 
would get vastly different doses of the vaccine; it would be a bit like 
giving some people one measles jab and others 500 of them. No regulatory 
agency would sign off on that, says molecular biologist Robert Sinden of 
Imperial College London. Releasing the mosquitoes would also mean 
vaccinating people without their informed consent, an ethical no-no. 
Yoshida concedes that the mosquito would be 'unacceptable' as a human 
vaccine-delivery mechanism.'


References

1 - Anderson et al. (2020) The proximal origin of SARS-CoV-2. Nature 
Medicine.
    https://www.nature.com/articles/s41591-020-0820-9
2 - Wan et al. (2020) Receptor Recognition by the Novel Coronavirus from 
Wuhan: an Analysis Based on Decade-Long Structural Studies of SARS 
Coronavirus. Journal of Virology.
    https://jvi.asm.org/content/94/7/e00127-20
3 - Wu et al. (2012) Mechanisms of Host Receptor Adaptation by Severe 
Acute Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus. Journal of Biological Chemistry.
    https://www.jbc.org/content/287/12/8904
4 - Wrapp et al. (2020) Cryo-EM structure of the 2019-nCoV spike in the 
prefusion conformation. Science.
    https://science.sciencemag.org/content/367/6483/1260
5 - Liu et al. (2020) No Credible Evidence Supporting Claims of the 
Laboratory Engineering of SARS-CoV-2. Emerging Microbes and Infections.
    https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/22221751.2020.1733440
6 - Xiao et al. (2020) HIV-1 did not contribute to the 2019-nCoV genome. 
Emerging Microbes and Infections.
    https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/22221751.2020.1727299
7 - Zhang et al. (2020) Protein Structure and Sequence Reanalysis of 
2019-nCoV Genome Refutes Snakes as Its Intermediate Host and the Unique 
Similarity between Its Spike Protein Insertions and HIV-1. Journal of 
Proteome Research.
    https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/acs.jproteome.0c00129
8 - Drolet et al. (2019) Population-level impact and herd effects 
following the introduction of human papillomavirus vaccination 
programmes: updated systematic review and meta-analysis. The Lancet.
    
https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(19)30298-3/fulltext
9 - Spinner et al. (2019) Human Papillomavirus Vaccine Effectiveness and 
Herd Protection in Young Women. Pediatrics.
    https://pediatrics.aappublications.org/content/143/2/e20181902
10 - Berenson et al. (2019) Change in Human Papillomavirus Prevalence 
Among U.S. Women Aged 18-59 Years, 2009-2014. Obstetrics and Gynecology.
     
https://journals.lww.com/greenjournal/Fulltext/2017/10000/Change_in_Human_Papillomavirus_Prevalence_Among.6.aspx
11 - Dhiman et al. (2018) Correlation between Non-Polio Acute Flaccid 
Paralysis Rates with Pulse Polio Frequency in India. International 
Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health.
    https://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/15/8/1755
12 - Morens et al. (2019) Acute Flaccid Myelitis: Something Old and 
Something New. mBio.
    https://mbio.asm.org/content/10/2/e00521-19
13 - McHugh et al. (2019) Biocompatible near-infrared quantum dots 
delivered to the skin by microneedle patches record vaccination. 
Science.
    https://stm.sciencemag.org/content/11/523/eaay7162
14 - Yamamoto et al. (2010) Flying vaccinator; a transgenic mosquito 
delivers a Leishmania vaccine via blood feeding. Insect Molecular 
Biology.
  Coronavirus  COVID-19  Vaccine
    
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/j.1365-2583.2010.01000.x

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