Debunking the coronavirus conspiracies in viral ‘Plandemic’ video
Dr. Dara Kass, a Yahoo News medical contributor, and Dr. Michael Saag, an epidemiologist at the University of Alabama, Birmingham, address some of the false medical claims made in the viral video "Plandemic," which was removed by social media platforms after garnering millions of views.
Video Transcript
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DARA KASS: We wanted to take a couple of minutes and address a viral video heading around social media that's actually been taken down from YouTube multiple times.
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It's a video that really contains a lot of false information, conspiracy theories, and really it's fake news.
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MICHAEL SAAG: One of the claims in the video is that this virus was created in a laboratory, say in Wuhan, or even at a US laboratory and taken over and released. We know a lot about this virus already. We know its genetic structure. It is highly related to a bat coronavirus, and there's lots of those. All it takes a few genetic mutations, and those viruses become infectious for humans.
And it's not out of the blue. This happens all the time. The technical term is a zoonosis. But what that means is that a virus or another pathogen is inside of an animal and it gets to us.
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DARA KASS: These doctors try to tell people that coming out of your home is in your public health best interest, that somehow wearing a mask is keeping you from getting viruses that your body should be fighting off, that somehow we are causing harm to people by protecting them via public health measures from this virus. When you see these multiple people, who've all been discredited by public health professionals, come together to now call to action this larger conspiracy theory, I think you need to be suspicious.
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MICHAEL SAAG: One of the things that, frankly, bothered me as I watched the video was the constant recurrence of bringing up Dr. Tony Fauci. And one of the things that they said is that he's suppressing information about hydroxychloroquine. Hydroxychloroquine is a drug that's used a lot. It's used to treat malaria, but more recently it's used a lot to control lupus.
There may be a slight advantage to using hydroxychloroquine, but there's also risk in terms of heart rhythm problems that can lead to sudden death. What Dr. Fauci was saying is, let's study this carefully before we start promoting it.
TONY FAUCI: I just want to make a comment about this.
DARA KASS: The coronavirus epidemic is really the fertile soil for all kinds of coronavirus conspiracy theories. And I think this video is actually a really good indication for us at how much misinformation can get out there quickly in social media.
MICHAEL SAAG: That's exactly right. And when you have videos out there are telling us things that are distracting, it takes us off what we need to be doing together, to pull together to defeat the virus.
DARA KASS: And in a lot of ways, that's the point, right? The point is to distract people from whatever we're trying to tell them that may be uncomfortable, or difficult, or hard work. So the most important thing people can do is figure out who are their trusted advisors, which health care professionals, policy makers, politicians they trust, if they can find them, and just listen to them.
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