Concerns about children’s mental health during pandemic
Doctors in France have expressed concern about the impact of the coronavirus pandemic on the mental health of children. The country’s busiest children’s hospital has doubled the number of children required after suicide treatment. (March 12)
AP
The claim: A 1956 black-and-white film predicted the coronavirus pandemic
A two-minute black-and-white video collage that allegedly warned as early as 1956 of the coronavirus pandemic has been widely shared on social media by Facebook users.
The video “Avoid the Future Plague” was shared to Facebook on February 24 and features a series of different tracks such as trains, an old robot and a typewriter.
“This 2-minute recording was made 65 years ago on February 29, 1956! Listen carefully to the last 30 seconds of this recording … Sounds familiar?” the user endorsed the video.
In the last 30 seconds of the video, a male narrator talks about the future and makes predictions about rampant obesity, political corruption and “worst of all … the rise of a deadly and potentially devastating disease.”
The narrator continues: “Experts predict that by 2020 a new virus will emerge and spread from somewhere in Asia to the rest of the world.”
USA TODAY directed the user for comment.
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Video was created as a satire in 2020
In response to misinformation surrounding COVID-19, the original creator of the video made it a satire in 2020; it was not created in 1956 as claimed by social media users.
Max Patrick Schlienger, who made the video, shared it on his RamsesThePigeon YouTube account on February 29 last year with the caption: “It’s hilarious to look back at how people from the fifties thought the future would be!”
He adds that all the footage used in the video was taken from archive.org, and he “first put it together because I wanted to upload a video on February 29.”
The original version of the video is 4 minutes long and contains a “footage missing” screen and an advertisement about Doeskin Napkins, which was removed from the social media versions.
In October 2020, when the video went viral for the first time, Schlienger told AFP New Zealand that “the intention behind the video was to ridicule the most popular parts of the misinformation that was circulating at the time … namely that Covid-19 was a largely harmless virus and the response to it was exaggerated. ‘
Schlienger said the series of tracks recorded in the video is a collection of educational videos, commercials and old horror movies in the public domain, and he recorded the voice recording.
USA TODAY contacted Schlienger for further comment.
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Where does the footage come from?
Snopes rejected the claim in October 2020 and discovered that many of the tracks recorded in the video were taken from old films from the mid-1900s.
The scene where a woman sips a cup comes from the movie “Tornado”, which was created in 1956 as a public service by the United Gas Corporation and the Eastern Texas Transmission Corporation.
The robot screen for cleaning the house comes from the black-and-white film ‘Leave It to Roll-Oh’ from the forties, a ‘tongue-in-cheek’ film that shows a domestic robot housewives freed from their duties, ‘according to archive.org.
The advertisement for Doeskin Dinner Napkins was also taken archive material from archive.org.
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Our rating: false
The claim that a video warning for a pandemic was created in 2020 in 1956 is FALSE, based on our research. The original creator of the video confirmed that he made it as a satire in 2020 in response to misinformation surrounding the coronavirus. The footage recorded in the video was taken from the public domain archive.
Our sources for fact checking:
- YouTube, February 29, 2020, PSA from the 1950s: ‘Avoid the future plague’
- AFP New Zealand, 21 October 2020, This satirical video was made in 2020 using old black and white film clips
- Snopes, October 5, 2020, Is this ‘avoidance of the future plague’ video a true 1950s PSA?
- Atomictheater.com, visit on March 18, Tornado
- Archive.org, 1940, Leave It to Roll-Oh
- Archive.org, 1954, 1954 Commercial Doeskin Dinner Napkins
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Our fact-checking work is supported in part by a Facebook grant.