Plandemic

The video promotes the conspiracist claim that vaccines are "a money-making enterprise that causes medical harm".[9] It takes the form of an interview between Willis and Mikovits in which Mikovits makes numerous unsupported or false claims around coronavirus, and her own controversial history.[3] Fact-checker PolitiFact highlighted eight false or misleading claims made in the video, including:[3]

• That Mikovits was held in jail without charge. Mikovits was briefly held on remand after an accusation of theft from her former employer, the Whittemore Peterson Institute, but charges were dropped. There is no evidence to support her claim that notebooks removed from the Institute were "planted" or that the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases and its director Anthony Fauci bribed investigators.[3] When asked, both Mikovits and Willis admitted that it was an error to say she had not been charged, and in fact she had meant to say that the charges were dropped, Mikovits saying that "I've been confused for a decade" and that in future she would try to be more clear when she talks about the criminal charge ("I'll try to learn to say it differently.").[15]
• That the virus was manipulated. An article in Nature analyses the likely origins and finds that "Our analyses clearly show that SARS-CoV-2 is not a laboratory construct or a purposefully manipulated virus".[16]
• That the virus occurred from SARS-1 within a decade, and this is inconsistent with natural causes. This is incorrect: SARS-CoV-2 is similar but not directly descended from SARS-CoV (SARS-1), with only 79% genetic similarity.[17]
• That hospitals receive "$13,000 from Medicare if you call it COVID-19" when a patient dies. This claim, which had previously been promoted by The American Spectator and WorldNetDaily,[18] was rated "half true" by PolitiFact[19] and Snopes:[20] payments are made, but the amount is open to dispute, and there is no evidence that this influences diagnosis, and in fact the evidence suggests that COVID-19 is, if anything, under-diagnosed.[21]
• That hydroxychloroquine is "effective against these families of viruses". This claim originates with work by Didier Raoult, which has subsequently received a "statement of concern" from the editors of the journal in which it was published.[22][23] The first randomized controlled trial to evaluate the efficacy of hydroxychloroquine for the treatment of COVID-19 found no evidence of benefit and some evidence of harm.[24][25] The NIH says that there is insufficient evidence to recommend for or against this use.[26] Other bodies are currently running additional controlled trials to investigate hydroxychloroquine's safety and efficacy; results from a WHO trial are expected in mid-June.[27]
• That flu vaccines increase the chance of contracting COVID-19 by 36%. This claim is false.[28][29] The claim misinterprets a disputed article that studied the 2017—2018 influenza season, predating the COVID-19 pandemic. The claim that the flu vaccine increases the chance of contracting COVID-19 does not appear in the original article at all. The author (Greg G. Wolff) wrote that coronavirus cases increased from 5.8% (non-vaccinated) to 7.8% (vaccinated) with odds ratio of 1.36, with (1.14, 1.63) 95% confidence interval, and the article highlight said: "Vaccinated personnel did not have significant odds of respiratory illnesses."[30] The article was referring to seasonal coronaviruses (common cold), but COVID-19 was added by the website disabledveterans.org.[29]
• That "If you've ever had a flu vaccine, you were injected with coronaviruses". This has also been debunked,[31][32][7] the flu shot contains no coronaviruses.[33]
• That "Wearing the mask literally activates your own virus. You're getting sick from your own reactivated coronavirus expressions." This claim is unsupported by evidence. Masks prevent airborne transmission of the virus, especially during the asymptomatic period (up to 14 days), when carriers may not even be aware they have the disease,[7][34] and a virus may be de-activated, but cannot add to one's infection level, if it leaves the body even temporarily.[35]

Mikovits also alludes to a number of anti-vaccine conspiracy theories regarding Bill Gates and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, notably the idea that Gates is implicated in creating the disease in order to profit from an eventual vaccine,[9] and makes false and unsupported claims that beaches should remain open, as "healing microbes in the saltwater" and "sequences" in the sand can "protect against the coronavirus".[9] The video claims that the numbers of COVID-19 deaths are purposely being misreported in an effort to control people.[36]

Willis' previous credits include numerous conspiracy theorist videos, as well as cinematography on Neurons to Nirvana, a film that makes therapeutic claims about psychedelic drugs.[3]

Scientists, medical doctors and public health experts condemned the film for promoting misinformation and "a hodgepodge of conspiracy theories".[11][37][38][39] Physician and comedian Zubin Damania wrote in his commentary: "Don't waste your time watching it. Don't waste your time sharing it. Don't waste your time talking about it. I can’t believe I'm wasting my time doing this. But I just want to stop getting messages about it."[40]

Accelerated Urgent Care, whose discredited[41] press conference statements by co-owners Dan Erickson and Artin Massihi were utilized in the video, released an official statement disagreeing with the video's agenda and claiming that the company never gave permission to Willis to utilize their video.[42]

Science journalist Tara Haelle described the video as propaganda and posited that the video "has been extremely successful at promoting misinformation for three reasons":

1. it "taps into people's uncertainty, anxiety and need for answers";
2. it "is packaged very professionally and uses common conventions people already associate with factual documentaries"
3. it effectively exploits various methods of persuasion, including the use of a seemingly trustworthy and sympathetic narrator, appeals to emotion, the Gish gallop, and "sciencey" images.[43]

Willis stated that propaganda was a fair description of the film.[15]

Zarine Kharazian, assistant editor of the Atlantic Council's Digital Forensic Research Lab, described the response to the removal of the video from Facebook and YouTube as a "censorship backfire", invoking the Streisand effect.[44]

• Vaxxed, a 2016 anti-vaccination film alleging a cover-up by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) of a discredited link between the MMR vaccine and autism.