A video falsely claiming that COVID-19 was planned to remove US President Donald Trump from office has spread online.
The five-minute clip was posted on Facebook on November 11, but deleted a day later. With the headline “The four-year plan to overthrow an elected president”, various photos and news clippings are displayed along with an introduction (other examples here and here).
The video expresses numerous assertions and opinions, but this article has only the opportunity to address some of the primary assertions.
THE COVID-19 PANDEMY IS PLANNED
The video claims that “plans for 2020 began immediately after the 2016 election” and “the COVID joke was underway years before Donald Trump’s election, but they quickly began tracking it.”
Any suggestion that COVID-19 is a deliberate pandemic is untrue. The US Centers for Disease Control (CDC) explains that the source of COVID-19 was probably a large market for seafood and live animals in Wuhan, China (here).
There is no indication or public evidence to suggest that the coronavirus was ‘designed’. On 12 November 2020, the World Health Organization reported more than 50 million confirmed cases of COVID-19 and more than 1 275 000 deaths (covid19.who.int/).
Reuters has dismissed numerous allegations that the coronavirus pandemic was planned here, here and here.
ANTHONIE FAUCI FORECASTS THE 2020 PANDEMY
The video claims that the American expert on infectious diseases, Anthony Fauci, said nine days before Trump’s inauguration that there is no doubt that President Trump will be confronted with a surprising infectious disease.
This statement is true, but it does not prove that the pandemic was planned. Conspiracy theories linking Fauci’s remark to the COVID-19 pandemic were circulated online in May and were debunked by the fact-checking website Snopes (here).
Speaking at a Georgetown University Forum in January 2017, Fauci spoke of pandemic preparedness when he said: ‘There is no doubt that the coming government will be a challenge in the arena of infectious diseases … there will also be a surprising be an outbreak. ‘
The speech is visible here and here.
Fauci did not specifically warn of a pandemic in 2020, but generally spoke of the dangers of infectious diseases. The Obama administration experienced the 2009 swine flu pandemic (here), the Zika virus epidemic 2015-16 (here) and the 2014-16 Ebola outbreak in West Africa (here).
BILL WARNINGS WARN FROM A DEATH PANDEMY
The video claims: “Two days after the president’s inauguration, Bill Gates spoke in Davos and warned of a deadly pandemic.”
It is true that Gates discussed the risk of a global health crisis in January 2017 at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland.
The billionaire philanthropist said: “I think an epidemic is the most likely thing, for example 10 million deaths, and that it is quite surprising how little preparedness there is for it.” The video can be seen here.
This remark is not proof that Gates was involved in the COVID-19 pandemic or in a plan to remove Trump from the White House.
Many cases of misinformation referred to Gates and were hacked by Reuters (here).
THE VIRUS CAME FROM A LAB
In the video, it is alleged that Fauci got involved in 2017 to make viruses contagious. This is true, but does not prove that the 2020 pandemic was deliberately created or planned.
The U.S. government has lifted a temporary ban on research funding where scientists have made pathogens more transmissible to understand how they can be naturally developed and used by others for bioworks, according to a 2017 Reuters report (here).
This research is not related to the origins of the 2020 pandemic. Many experts have said that the novel coronavirus originated in the wild and was not man-made (here and here).
Vincent Racaniello, professor of Higgins at the Department of Microbiology and Immunology at Columbia University, told Reuters in an email: “There is a wealth of evidence … which makes it very clear that SARS-CoV-2 (the coronavirus causing COVID-19) originates in nature, not in a laboratory. ”
As stated earlier, the CDC explained that the source of COVID-19 was probably a large seafood and live animal market in Wuhan (here).
EVENT 201 PREDICTION OF THE PANDEMY
To substantiate the allegation that the 2020 pandemic is planned, the video contains ‘Event 201’ as supporting evidence.
Event 201 was a true exercise that mimicked the outbreak of an imaginary coronavirus transmitted from bats to pigs on Brazilian farms before humans spread it worldwide through aviation. The event was organized 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.
According to the website of the event, the simulation was intended to highlight “important gaps in pandemic preparedness” (here).
Conspiracy theories linking this event to the 2020 pandemic escalated in April and were dismissed by the fact-checking organization Full Fact (here).
Event 201 highlighted the risks of a global outbreak but did not plan the 2020 coronavirus pandemic.
COVID-19 IS LESS KILLING THAN THE COMMON COLD
The video claims that: “Fear is injected into the brainwashed masses over a virus that is less deadly than the common cold.”
Allegations that COVID-19 is less deadly than the common cold or seasonal flu have been rejected several times by Reuters (here, here, here).
Although most COVID-19 patients experience only mild or no symptoms, it is much more lethal than common colds.
THE 2020 ELECTION HAS TAKEN PLACE
The video concludes that election fraud took place to ensure that Trump could not win the 2020 U.S. election.
The speaker claims that: “Only when Trump increases in key states, the election is inexplicably stopped.” Reuters dismissed allegations that states had stopped voting and deducted votes for President-elect Joe Biden here and there.
The clip also claims that thousands of votes appeared by email “in the middle of the night for Biden”. Since election day, Reuters has been reviewing several allegations of voter fraud, which are visible on www.reuters.com/fact-check.
According to experts, election fraud has barely disappeared in the United States, where nearly one in four voters in 2016 (here) cast an in- or absent ballot.
Other conspiracy theories surrounding the US election are being debunked by Reuters www.reuters.com/fact-check.
VERDICT
Untrue. The COVID-19 pandemic in 2020 was not planned to overthrow Trump. Experts agree that the virus originated in nature, not in a laboratory, and that there is no evidence of mass election fraud during the US election.
This article was produced by the Reuters Fact Check team. Read more about our job control job reuters.com/fact-check/about.