Led by Facebook’s efforts to curb the online dissemination of disinformation, posts show a clip of American rapper and singer Pitbull indicating that the COVID-19 pandemic was planned due to the event 201 by Johns Hopkins University, the World Economic Forum and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation a rehearsal for what is happening now. The video also makes misleading claims about the existence of a patent for the new coronavirus, which points to an expired patent from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) for the isolated SARS-CoV-1, another coronavirus that caused 2002-2004. SARS epidemic.
One post that shares this track can be seen here.
The clip comes from an episode in September 2020 of the RevoltTv show ‘Drink Champs’, presented by rapper NORE and executive DJ DJ EFN (www.revolt.tv/drink-champs). The full episode with Pitbull, which is almost three hours long, is available here.
For the purposes of this fact check, Reuters will address two major claims featured in this clip, as shown here in an edited Instagram video with nearly 20,000 views at the time of publication of this article. Other claims made in the extract are opinions and fall outside the scope of this fact check.
EVENT 201
Around the 1:24 mark in the Instagram video (here), Pitbull expresses suspicion about event 201, an actual exercise that mimicked the outbreak of an imaginary coronavirus transmitted from bats to pigs on Brazilian farms before humans spread worldwide by aviation (here).
The event will be hosted in October 2019 by the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Safety, in conjunction with the World Economic Forum and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. The simulation was intended to highlight ‘significant gaps in pandemic preparedness’, according to the Event 201 website (here).
The rapper described the event as “a complete rehearsal of what we are doing now”, saying it was “run by John Hopkins (sic) University, which is in collaboration with Bill Gates, Melinda Gates Foundation.”
Conspiracy theories linking this event to the COVID-19 pandemic spread online in April 2020 amid global barriers intended to combat infections (here).
Johns Hopkins has since stressed that Event 201 was organized due to a “growing number of epidemic events” (here). It was based on a “fictional coronavirus pandemic” and was designed to model preparations and response (here).
Previous Reuters fact-checking on conspiracy theories surrounding event 201 can be found here, here and here.
CDC PATENT FOR A CORONAVIRUS
At the 3:20 point in the Instagram video (here), the conversation turns to an alleged patent for the new coronavirus.
The Instagram video shows the Google Patents page for the CDC’s patent for the SARS-CoV virus (here), the isolated human coronavirus that caused the SARS epidemic that originated in China in 2002 (here).
According to Jasmine Reed, spokesperson for the CDC, it was seized on April 25, 2003 and patent number 46592703P, which was the CDC’s preliminary patent application for the isolated virus.
In 2007, CDC patent number 7220852 was granted for isolated human coronavirus SARS-CoV (here).
Coronaviruses are a family of viruses that cause diseases of the upper respiratory tract. Over the past twenty years, three new coronaviruses have appeared that have caused serious illness and death: SARS-CoV-1, which caused SARS to break out in China in 2002, MERS – CoV, which caused the outbreak of respiratory syndrome in the Middle East -East in Saudi Arabia in 2012. Arabia and SARS-CoV-2, which cause COVID-19 (here, here), here).
As outlined here by McGill University’s Office of Science and Society, amid the SARS outbreak, biotechnology enterprises sought to protect the isolation of the genetic material from specific strains of this virus to exclude others from the commercialization of ‘ a test kit or even a potential vaccine based. on that virus. ”
In response, the CDC filed their own patent on the isolated SARS virus, as well as its genes and proteins. The CDC said at the time that it had filed the patents to prevent private companies from monopolizing the field (www.nbcnews.com/id/wbna3076748).
CDC spokeswoman Jasmine Reed confirmed in an email to Reuters that the reference in the video had expired and that the CDC no longer patented isolated viruses.
As set out in a previous Reuters fact check (here), after the Chinese government identified SARS-CoV-2 on January 7, 2020, its genetic material (RNA) was followed up. This sequence contains instructions for the production of proteins from the virus, which is the basis for the vaccines Pfizer-BioNTech, Oxford-AstraZeneca and Moderna.
A Pitbull spokesman did not respond to a request for comment.
VERDICT
Missing context. Event 201 and the CDC’s expired patent for SARS-CoV-1 (the virus that caused the outbreak of the SARS 2002-2004) is not evidence that the COVID-19 pandemic was planned.
This article was produced by the Reuters Fact Check team. Read more about our work to actually check social media posts.