A video promoting the new movie Plandemic, which criticizes the U.S. government’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic and features controversial researcher Dr. Judy Mikovits, has been removed by YouTube. You can watch the video later in this article.
The video — described on the Plandemic website as a 25-minute vignette in advance of the movie’s release — features Mikovits, a former chronic fatigue researcher who sharply criticizes Dr. Anthony Fauci and mass vaccinations. She argues that the government’s response to coronavirus is designed to inflate profits at the risk of lives. Mikovits is a controversial researcher who was co-author of a discredited research study.
Heavy has conducted an extensive fact-checking of various claims made in the Plandemic video. You can read it here. The video can be found here.
Heavy also reached out to Fauci for response to the video through his agency. Amanda Fine, chief of the news media branch for the National Institutes of Health, responded with this statement: “The National Institutes of Health and National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases are focused on critical research aimed at ending the COVID-19 pandemic and preventing further deaths. We are not engaging in tactics by some seeking to derail our efforts.”
The video, which was created by a small production company in Ojai, California, was available on YouTube until the afternoon of May 6, 2020, and was going viral on social media. It was then removed by the platform and replaced with the statement, “This video has been removed for violating YouTube’s Community Guidelines.” That statement linked to YouTube’s community guidelines, which you can read in full here. Heavy has reached out to YouTube’s press office to obtain comment on why Plandemic‘s video was removed. Read more about the man who made the video, Mikki Willis, here.
The Plandemic video has been widely shared online. It has also attracted criticism.
Use critical thinking when being fed conspiracy theory videos like #Plandemic. None of it is even remotely true and is not backed up by any evidence.
t.co/VoJuEnCPKO
Whether YouTube and other social media platforms should censor opposing views, including during a pandemic, is a hotly debated issue. On Twitter, Mikovits wrote, “I am so honored to be featured in Mikki Willis’ upcoming amazing film! Anticipation of this film is getting huge response…So thankful to Mikki for hearing my story.” Heavy has reached out to Willis through his production company for comment and to Mikovitz through the publisher of her new co-authored book, Plague of Corruption: Restoring Faith in the Promise of Science.
The video was featured on the Plandemic website. “Prior to the completion of the full-length documentary we’ll be releasing a series of vignettes. The first installment features renowned scientist, Judy Mikovits PHD,” it reads. But the video no longer shows up.
Willis, the filmmaker behind the video, predicted it would be removed. He wrote on Facebook on May 4:
Dear gatekeepers of truth and free speech, before removing this video, please read these words:
The world is watching you. We understand the pressure you’re under to censor any information that contradicts the popular narrative. We know the risk that comes with defying the orders of those who pull the strings. We realize even the biggest of tech giants are under the command of powerful forces that wield the ability to destroy your empire with the click of a key. But due to the critical condition of our world, “I was just doing my job” is no longer an acceptable excuse.
This is no time to play politics. Our future is your future. Your family’s future. Your children’s future. Your grandchildren’s future. This is a plea to the human in you. Preventing this information from reaching the people is taking a firm stance on the wrong side of history. A choice you will certainly live to regret as truth exponentially emerges. There is nothing, no billionaire, no politician, no media, no level of censorship that can slow this awakening. It is here. It is happening. Whose side are you on?
And to the citizens of this magnificent planet…
If anything is clear at this moment, it is the fact that no one is coming to save us. We are the ones we’ve been waiting for. Though great forces have worked long and hard to divide us, our resilience, strength, and intelligence has been gravely underestimated. Now is the time to put all our differences aside. United we stand. Divided we fall.
Be brave. Share this video far and wide! Should this video be removed from this platform, download your own copy at:
PlandemicMovie.com
Then, upload directly to all of your favorite platforms. You have our full permission to spread this information without limitation.
He posted the video on his Facebook page:
Facebook hasn’t removed the video.
Here’s what you need to know:
The ‘Plandemic’ Website Claims That Our ‘Current Reality’ With COVID-19 Is the Equivalent of a Horror Movie
Twitter/GettyMikovits, who appears in the movie Plandemic, and Fauci.
The Plandemic website paints governmental COVID-19 strategies as an attempt to enrich billionaires who hold patents.
The promotional material for Plandemic claims:
Humanity is imprisoned by a killer pandemic. People are being arrested for surfing in the ocean and meditating in nature. Nations are collapsing. Hungry citizens are rioting for food. The media has generated so much confusion and fear that people are begging for salvation in a syringe. Billionaire patent owners are pushing for globally mandated vaccines. Anyone who refuses to be injected with experimental poisons will be prohibited from travel, education and work. No, this is not a synopsis for a new horror movie. This is our current reality.
The website also claims:
They named it COVID19. Our leaders of world health predicted millions would die. The National Guard was deployed. Makeshift hospitals were erected to care for a massive overflow of patients. Mass graves were dug. Terrifying news reports had people everywhere seeking shelter to avoid contact. The plan was unfolding with diabolical precision, but the masters of the Pandemic underestimated one thing… the people. Medical professionals and every-day citizens are sharing critical information online. The overlords of big tech have ordered all dissenting voices to be silenced and banned, but they are too late. The slumbering masses are awake and aware that something is not right. Quarantine has provided the missing element: time. Suddenly, our overworked citizenry has ample time to research and investigate for themselves. Once you see, you can’t unsee.
The window of opportunity is open like never before. For the first time in human history, we have the world’s attention. Plandemic will expose the scientific and political elite who run the scam that is our global health system, while laying out a new plan; a plan that allows all of humanity to reconnect with healing forces of nature. 2020 is the code for perfect vision. It is also the year that will go down in history as the moment we finally opened our eyes.
Some people have described Mikovits as a conspiracy theorist and anti-vaccine “truther” (although she denies she’s anti-vaccine in the Plandemic movie vignette). Snopes claims Mikovits appears on “unreliable websites” and gives talks at “fringe conferences such as The Truth About Cancer and Autism One.” A press release for Mikovits’ book describes her as a scientist “with the brilliant wit one might expect if Erin Brockovich had a doctorate in molecular biology.”
Elevate is the production company behind Plandemic. The company says on its website:
Our portfolio includes feature films, record setting network TV specials, commercials, and music videos for multi-platinum artists. Our clients include some of the world’s foremost scientists, futurists, evolutionary experts, and best selling authors. We are totally committed to using the awesome power of movies and viral media to activate real and lasting change – to bridge ancient wisdom with modern technology – to share stories that deserve a voice – to champion worthy causes – to amplify the good news of the world – and of course… to ELEVATE!
The upcoming film Plandemic is coming out in summer 2020, according to its website. The site says the first installment “features renowned scientist, Judy Mikovits PHD.” That’s the video that was removed.
The 25-minute long vignette claims that Mikovits has been called “one of the most accomplished scientists of her generation” and did work revolutionizing the treatment of HIV/AIDs. The film says she published a “blockbuster” study that claimed “the common use of animal and human fetal tissues were unleashing devastating plagues of chronic diseases.” The “minions of Big Pharma” then waged war against her, destroying her “good name, career and personal life,” the vignette claims.
In the clip, Mikovits admits to being arrested but claims it was to stop her from speaking out. The vignette had more than 1.6 million views on YouTube. She’s interviewed by Willis, whose YouTube account disseminated the video. His Facebook page defines him as a filmmaker for Elevate. Elevate’s Facebook page calls it “a tribe of creatives who stand for the power of art and media as a tool to inspire the masses and activate change.”
Soon, Dr Fauci, everyone will know who you “really are”.
In the video, Mikovits claims she had 97 witnesses in the case that resulted in her arrest, including Fauci, whom she claims would have had to testify. She claims she was held in jail with no charges. She claims intellectual material from the laboratory was “planted” in her house. “I have no constitutional freedoms or rights,” she says.
She casts the government’s approach to fighting COVID-19 in dire terms.
“If we don’t stop this now, we can not only forget our republic and our freedom, but we can forget humanity because we will be killed by this agenda,” she says.
Mikovits claims Fauci “directed” a coverup that involved financial profit for some. What he’s saying now about COVID-19 is “absolutely propaganda,” she says.
Fauci is the head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) who has been a leading government figure in briefings about COVID-19 strategies, including lockdowns and other measures to “flatten the curve.” Heavy wrote to NIAID’s press office to give Fauci a chance to respond to Mikovits’ claims and will add comment into this story if it’s received.
In the video, Mikovits claims Fauci perpetrated propaganda that led to the deaths of millions of people in the past. She also raised questions about how COVID-19 deaths are being counted.
She claimed she isolated HIV from the saliva and blood of patients in France but that Fauci was involved in delaying research, which allowed the HIV virus to spread. These claims are not proven. She also says patents are a conflict of interest. Mikovits also criticizes the concept of mass vaccines. “They will kill millions, as they already have with their vaccines,” she says, stressing she is not anti-vaccine. She claims there is a financial incentive in COVID-19 strategies to not use natural remedies in order to push people to use vaccines.
Mikovits also wrote a book called Plague: One Scientist’s Intrepid Search for the Truth about Human Retroviruses and Chronic Fatigue Syndrome (ME/CFS), Autism, and Other Diseases and claims 30% of vaccines are contaminated with retroviruses.
Her new book contains a forward from Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
“How many new retroviruses have we created through all the mouse research, the vaccine research, gene therapy research?” she was quoted as saying in 2015. “More importantly, how many new diseases have we created? They’re experimenting with us now. I’m really worried about the population.”
In another YouTube video, she claimed about COVID-19: “We don’t need a vaccine. All you have to do is have a healthy immune system.” That video was removed from YouTube because YouTube said it violated its community guidelines.
Vice reports that Mikovits has been involved in a “Fire Fauci” campaign, “claiming he sabotaged her research into a purported mouse virus that she says is the true cause of cancer.” According to Vice, Mikovits also opposes wearing masks to protect against coronavirus.
The press release for her book describes Mikovits as having “spent twenty years at the National Cancer Institute, working with Dr. Frank Ruscetti, one of the founding fathers of human retrovirology, and has coauthored more than forty scientific papers. She co-founded and directed the first neuroimmune disease institute using a systems biology approach in 2006. Dr. Mikovits lives in Southern California with her husband, David.”
The reality behind the claims is more complex.
Mikovits Was Accused of Stealing Equipment & Keeping Laboratory Notebooks; She Was Fired as Part of an Alleged ‘Power Struggle’
Snopes has written a long article that says Mikovits “did not discover a deadly virus delivered through vaccines. She was arrested for allegedly stealing equipment belonging to the Institute that fired her.”
The criminal case received coverage at the time. According to Science magazine, in November 2011, the district attorney in Washoe County, Nevada, filed a criminal complaint against Mikovits that “charged the virologist with illegally taking computer data and related property from her former employer, the Whittemore Peterson Institute for Neuro-Immune Disease (WPI) in Reno, Nevada.”
WPI also filed a civil suit seeking materials from Mikovits including laboratory notebooks used for research. She was briefly jailed, but the DA later tossed the charges, Science magazine reports.
Judy Mikovits charges dismissed
According to Science magazine, the WPI co-founder was accused criminally in a separate campaign finance donation case, complicating the case against Mikovits due to “witness issues.” She told Science magazine that the case made it hard for her to find work other than a study she was working on that was funded by National Institutes of Health.
The magazine quoted the District Attorney as saying: “There’s a lot going on with the federal government and different levels that wasn’t occurring when we first became involved with prosecuting this case. And we have witness issues that have arisen.” Heavy has reached out to the DA’s office for comment and the original criminal complaint.
Mikovits was also a co-author in a paper called Detection of an Infectious Retrovirus, XMRV, in Blood Cells of Patients with Chronic Fatigue Syndrome. However, the article was retracted. Snopes notes that the article didn’t deal with vaccines.
In 2011, the journal Science published an “editorial Expression of Concern.” In summarizing the research findings, the expression of concern noted that the article claimed “to show that a retrovirus called XMRV (xenotropic murine leukemia virus–related virus) was present in the blood of 67% of patients with chronic fatigue syndrome.” However, other studies could not replicate the findings.
“Since then, at least 10 studies conducted by other investigators and published elsewhere have reported a failure to detect XMRV in independent populations of CFS patients.” the expression of concern notes. Instead, there was a growing view that any association “likely reflects contamination of laboratories and research reagents with the virus,” the notation states.
The journal noted that the research “attracted considerable attention, and its publication in Science has had a far-reaching impact on the community of CFS patients and beyond.” However, because “the validity of the study by Lombardi et al. is now seriously in question, we are publishing this Expression of Concern and attaching it to Science’s 23 October 2009 publication by Lombardi et al.”
The authors issued a partial retraction of their findings, but the paper was later retracted in full. Mikovits was one of multiple authors listed on the study.
In the retraction, Bruce Alberts, the editor-in-chief, wrote that there “is evidence of poor quality control in a number of specific experiments in the Report” and noted that other studies couldn’t replicate the findings. “Science has lost confidence in the Report and the validity of its conclusions. We note that the majority of the authors have agreed in principle to retract the Report but they have been unable to agree on the wording of their statement,” Alberts wrote. “… We are therefore editorially retracting the Report.”
A 2012 release from the American Society of Microbiology says: “Contrary to previous findings, new research finds no link between chronic fatigue syndrome and the viruses XMRV (xenotropic murine leukemia virus-related virus) and pMLV (polytropic murine leukemia virus).”
In the wake of the retracted article, Mikovits lost her job at the Whittemore Peterson Institute. According to Nature, she was fired in October 2011 after “she clashed with the institute’s president and co-founder, Annette Whittemore, over the work of another researcher.”
READ NEXT: Judy Mikovits’ Career