WEBVTT - Dr. Judy Mikovits and the 'Plandemic'

0:00:00.080 --> 0:00:03.920
<v Speaker 1>It's Friday, ma I'm oscar Mirrors from the Daily Dive

0:00:04.000 --> 0:00:07.560
<v Speaker 1>podcast in Los Angeles, and this is your daily coronavirus update.

0:00:08.840 --> 0:00:11.399
<v Speaker 1>Big social media platforms have been pretty quick to stop

0:00:11.400 --> 0:00:14.560
<v Speaker 1>the spread of misinformation during the pandemic, but last week

0:00:14.840 --> 0:00:17.119
<v Speaker 1>we saw the first true hit conspiracy video of the

0:00:17.160 --> 0:00:20.480
<v Speaker 1>coronavirus era. It was called the Plandemic and it got

0:00:20.480 --> 0:00:23.799
<v Speaker 1>over eight million views on Facebook and YouTube. The video

0:00:23.840 --> 0:00:26.239
<v Speaker 1>has since been removed, but not before making a star

0:00:26.320 --> 0:00:30.480
<v Speaker 1>out of the discredited scientist Dr Judy mcovits. Casey Newton,

0:00:30.840 --> 0:00:33.680
<v Speaker 1>Silicon Valley editor at The Verge, joins us for what

0:00:33.760 --> 0:00:37.000
<v Speaker 1>to know about the plandemic. Thanks for joining us, Casey,

0:00:37.000 --> 0:00:41.600
<v Speaker 1>thanks for having me. Whenever something like the coronavirus pandemic happens,

0:00:41.640 --> 0:00:44.960
<v Speaker 1>whenever there's a big world event or something huge happening,

0:00:45.320 --> 0:00:48.839
<v Speaker 1>there always tends to be some type of hoax or

0:00:49.040 --> 0:00:52.279
<v Speaker 1>conspiracy theory attached to it. And these times, especially when

0:00:52.320 --> 0:00:54.640
<v Speaker 1>we're all stuck at home and on the internet so much,

0:00:54.840 --> 0:00:57.760
<v Speaker 1>these things generally tend to pop up. If you'll remember,

0:00:57.760 --> 0:01:00.400
<v Speaker 1>back in February, there was this whole thing spreading on

0:01:00.440 --> 0:01:03.840
<v Speaker 1>YouTube and Facebook that was alleging that five g cellular

0:01:03.880 --> 0:01:07.560
<v Speaker 1>networks were playing a role in spreading the virus. But

0:01:07.880 --> 0:01:10.920
<v Speaker 1>right now, this is past week, this other kind of

0:01:11.080 --> 0:01:14.120
<v Speaker 1>conspiracy theory slash hoax thing popped up. It was a

0:01:14.240 --> 0:01:17.600
<v Speaker 1>video called the Plandemic and it featured a woman named

0:01:17.680 --> 0:01:21.800
<v Speaker 1>Dr Judy Muscovitz, and she was alleging things about Dr

0:01:21.840 --> 0:01:24.600
<v Speaker 1>Anthony Fauci, who was on the Coronavirus Task Force team.

0:01:24.800 --> 0:01:27.600
<v Speaker 1>There's all sorts of craziness in this video. Casey tell

0:01:27.680 --> 0:01:29.479
<v Speaker 1>us about the video and then we'll get into how

0:01:29.520 --> 0:01:35.319
<v Speaker 1>it went viral. So the video is conspiracy theory, as

0:01:35.440 --> 0:01:39.840
<v Speaker 1>you note, and the basic idea seems to be that

0:01:40.160 --> 0:01:45.360
<v Speaker 1>some shadowy elites are conspiring to use the pandemic to

0:01:46.280 --> 0:01:50.880
<v Speaker 1>sees power maybe make money by creating vaccines. And the

0:01:51.000 --> 0:01:54.280
<v Speaker 1>star of this twenty six minute clip that went viral

0:01:54.600 --> 0:01:58.320
<v Speaker 1>is this woman named Judy Mikovitz, who has become a

0:01:58.440 --> 0:02:02.440
<v Speaker 1>kind of hero to the Tie vaccine crowd. She's a

0:02:02.520 --> 0:02:07.040
<v Speaker 1>discredited scientist who published a book in April called Plague

0:02:07.040 --> 0:02:10.280
<v Speaker 1>of Corruption that sort of depicts her as a truth

0:02:10.360 --> 0:02:16.200
<v Speaker 1>teller fighting scientists who aren't willing to accept inconvenient facts,

0:02:16.440 --> 0:02:20.639
<v Speaker 1>and so far right publications began to promote her book,

0:02:20.840 --> 0:02:24.880
<v Speaker 1>and this documentary that is forthcoming will apparently be taking

0:02:25.040 --> 0:02:28.240
<v Speaker 1>an even closer look at these sort of baseless conspiracies.

0:02:28.480 --> 0:02:31.240
<v Speaker 1>This video has since since it kind of blew up,

0:02:31.280 --> 0:02:33.800
<v Speaker 1>has been taken down, but tell us about some of

0:02:33.840 --> 0:02:35.720
<v Speaker 1>the crazy accusations in it. I mean, one of the

0:02:35.760 --> 0:02:37.560
<v Speaker 1>things that keeps popping up, and I think it was

0:02:37.600 --> 0:02:40.000
<v Speaker 1>the main thing that really got it pulled down was

0:02:40.200 --> 0:02:43.359
<v Speaker 1>they were saying that wearing a mask will literally activate

0:02:43.400 --> 0:02:46.480
<v Speaker 1>your own virus. That's right, and that is the thing

0:02:46.720 --> 0:02:50.200
<v Speaker 1>that got it taken down. Platforms like YouTube and Facebook

0:02:50.320 --> 0:02:54.280
<v Speaker 1>generally do not want to remove content from the network,

0:02:54.440 --> 0:02:58.040
<v Speaker 1>and they try to enable a maximum of free speech,

0:02:58.080 --> 0:03:00.560
<v Speaker 1>but they do make an exception for or stuff that

0:03:00.680 --> 0:03:04.840
<v Speaker 1>is actively harmful. And while a lot of this video

0:03:05.080 --> 0:03:08.840
<v Speaker 1>plandemic is just kind of conspiracy, is saying, don't forget

0:03:08.840 --> 0:03:11.000
<v Speaker 1>a lot of people are making money and other people

0:03:11.000 --> 0:03:13.320
<v Speaker 1>are going to become more powerful, that's not why it

0:03:13.360 --> 0:03:15.880
<v Speaker 1>got taken down. It got taken down because, as you say,

0:03:15.960 --> 0:03:18.920
<v Speaker 1>it warned people against wearing masks, you know, saying that

0:03:19.000 --> 0:03:21.840
<v Speaker 1>it would reinfect them, which of course there's no basis

0:03:21.880 --> 0:03:24.120
<v Speaker 1>for that whatsoever. But you can imagine if a lot

0:03:24.120 --> 0:03:26.280
<v Speaker 1>of people watch that and believe that it could have

0:03:26.320 --> 0:03:30.639
<v Speaker 1>a really negative effect on public health. So initially Facebook

0:03:30.800 --> 0:03:33.160
<v Speaker 1>didn't want to remove it, but when it sort of

0:03:33.160 --> 0:03:36.480
<v Speaker 1>stumbled across that particular claim, it said, Okay, we've actually

0:03:36.520 --> 0:03:39.520
<v Speaker 1>got to take this thing down. And Dr Judy mikovits

0:03:39.640 --> 0:03:42.760
<v Speaker 1>for herself. She does have a degree in biology from

0:03:42.800 --> 0:03:46.000
<v Speaker 1>the University of Virginia, a PhD in molecular biology. She

0:03:46.120 --> 0:03:50.080
<v Speaker 1>worked on the National Cancer Institute. She has a lot

0:03:50.120 --> 0:03:52.840
<v Speaker 1>of things under her belt. But then she started getting

0:03:52.840 --> 0:03:56.600
<v Speaker 1>into work about chronic fatigue syndrome and vaccines, and this

0:03:56.680 --> 0:03:59.080
<v Speaker 1>is kind of where she was derailed a little bit.

0:03:59.120 --> 0:04:01.280
<v Speaker 1>A lot of people disc credited a lot of the

0:04:01.400 --> 0:04:04.760
<v Speaker 1>later things that she was researching, so like, in two

0:04:04.760 --> 0:04:08.480
<v Speaker 1>thousand nine, she had published research saying that a mouse

0:04:08.640 --> 0:04:13.160
<v Speaker 1>retrovirus caused chronic fatigue syndrome, which got a lot of attention,

0:04:13.680 --> 0:04:16.320
<v Speaker 1>but it was discredited a couple years later and the

0:04:16.400 --> 0:04:20.039
<v Speaker 1>journal ultimately retracted it. And then in this sort of

0:04:20.080 --> 0:04:23.080
<v Speaker 1>like weird side story, she was actually put in jail

0:04:23.240 --> 0:04:28.080
<v Speaker 1>on charges of theft, which apparently involved computers disappearing. Those

0:04:28.160 --> 0:04:31.160
<v Speaker 1>charges were dropped, but the whole thing was a scandal

0:04:31.560 --> 0:04:35.320
<v Speaker 1>and she was kind of sideline and lost her scientific career.

0:04:35.560 --> 0:04:38.960
<v Speaker 1>But after that she sort of drifted into this anti

0:04:39.040 --> 0:04:42.920
<v Speaker 1>vax crowd, and because of the credentials that you mentioned,

0:04:42.960 --> 0:04:45.400
<v Speaker 1>the anti vaxers have sort of lifted her up as

0:04:45.480 --> 0:04:48.280
<v Speaker 1>this brave truth teller, even though what she's saying is

0:04:48.360 --> 0:04:51.880
<v Speaker 1>largely nonsense. So let's talk about how something like this

0:04:51.920 --> 0:04:55.359
<v Speaker 1>goes viral. The usual players come up. Obviously, Facebook and

0:04:55.400 --> 0:04:57.919
<v Speaker 1>YouTube have a huge part in this, just because of

0:04:58.080 --> 0:05:00.560
<v Speaker 1>how big the platforms are, But there was a lot

0:05:00.560 --> 0:05:03.800
<v Speaker 1>of Facebook groups that were sharing this, and then beyond that,

0:05:03.880 --> 0:05:06.960
<v Speaker 1>even as you mentioned, there's a lot of mistruths in

0:05:07.000 --> 0:05:10.159
<v Speaker 1>these video but it also takes time for their fact

0:05:10.240 --> 0:05:12.960
<v Speaker 1>checkers to go through this, so, as you've mentioned, they

0:05:12.960 --> 0:05:15.159
<v Speaker 1>didn't take it down right away. It kind of was

0:05:15.240 --> 0:05:17.880
<v Speaker 1>circulating around for a while while they were trying to

0:05:18.320 --> 0:05:21.800
<v Speaker 1>do some of that fact checking. It's a really interesting story.

0:05:22.120 --> 0:05:25.720
<v Speaker 1>The way that things go viral on Facebook and YouTube

0:05:25.920 --> 0:05:29.360
<v Speaker 1>is always changing based on things that the platforms do

0:05:29.560 --> 0:05:32.120
<v Speaker 1>to try to stop bad stuff from happening, and sort

0:05:32.160 --> 0:05:35.080
<v Speaker 1>of like as soon as they fixed one problem, another emerges.

0:05:35.279 --> 0:05:37.240
<v Speaker 1>So over the past year, Facebook has put a lot

0:05:37.279 --> 0:05:39.960
<v Speaker 1>more attention on groups, getting people to join groups, kind

0:05:39.960 --> 0:05:42.520
<v Speaker 1>of moving you away from that news feed. And there

0:05:42.520 --> 0:05:46.120
<v Speaker 1>are a lot of conspiracy groups, anti vax groups where

0:05:46.120 --> 0:05:48.919
<v Speaker 1>this video clip was very popular, and what happened is

0:05:48.960 --> 0:05:51.000
<v Speaker 1>people were sharing it in the group and what they

0:05:51.000 --> 0:05:53.400
<v Speaker 1>were sharing was actually a link to YouTube. And so

0:05:53.560 --> 0:05:57.159
<v Speaker 1>from those Facebook groups, they were able to send seven

0:05:57.200 --> 0:06:01.240
<v Speaker 1>point one million views to one video within a period

0:06:01.440 --> 0:06:04.760
<v Speaker 1>of between thirty six and forty eight hours. So just

0:06:04.800 --> 0:06:08.039
<v Speaker 1>within that short period of time, Facebook drove all of

0:06:08.080 --> 0:06:11.000
<v Speaker 1>that traffic to YouTube, and so it was kind of

0:06:11.040 --> 0:06:14.120
<v Speaker 1>an unwitting tag team between the two platforms that sent

0:06:14.240 --> 0:06:17.159
<v Speaker 1>this thing viral. As you noted, it did take a

0:06:17.160 --> 0:06:20.560
<v Speaker 1>while for the platforms to fully understand what was in

0:06:20.600 --> 0:06:23.359
<v Speaker 1>the video. The video is twenty six minutes long, it

0:06:23.480 --> 0:06:26.280
<v Speaker 1>contains a lot of claims, and they had to go

0:06:26.360 --> 0:06:29.120
<v Speaker 1>through it sort of point by point and ultimately make

0:06:29.160 --> 0:06:31.600
<v Speaker 1>the determination that it had to come down. But it

0:06:31.720 --> 0:06:34.760
<v Speaker 1>sort of speaks to this cliche, this quote that is

0:06:34.880 --> 0:06:37.919
<v Speaker 1>attributed to Mark Twain that the lie gets halfway around

0:06:37.960 --> 0:06:40.000
<v Speaker 1>the world before the truth can put its shoes on,

0:06:40.400 --> 0:06:42.560
<v Speaker 1>and that was definitely the case here, and it was

0:06:42.600 --> 0:06:45.440
<v Speaker 1>also this whole thing with obviously all the algorithms and

0:06:45.640 --> 0:06:48.919
<v Speaker 1>this big cycle. She had just published a book not

0:06:49.000 --> 0:06:52.560
<v Speaker 1>too long ago, and it became this thing where searches

0:06:52.600 --> 0:06:55.200
<v Speaker 1>for her name brought up searches for the video, and

0:06:55.400 --> 0:06:57.640
<v Speaker 1>vice versa, searches for the video would bring up searches

0:06:57.720 --> 0:06:59.720
<v Speaker 1>for her name. So it's kind of this big cycle

0:06:59.760 --> 0:07:02.520
<v Speaker 1>where just feeding off of itself for a while until

0:07:02.720 --> 0:07:05.880
<v Speaker 1>Facebook and YouTube took these things down. And you know,

0:07:05.960 --> 0:07:08.880
<v Speaker 1>I think it's important to remember that Judy mckovitz has

0:07:08.880 --> 0:07:11.040
<v Speaker 1>something to sell, right She has a book to sell,

0:07:11.280 --> 0:07:14.920
<v Speaker 1>and this whole viral event on Facebook and YouTube has

0:07:14.920 --> 0:07:17.360
<v Speaker 1>been very good for her. She had a number one

0:07:17.440 --> 0:07:20.880
<v Speaker 1>best seller on Amazon over the weekend. Yesterday it was

0:07:20.920 --> 0:07:23.880
<v Speaker 1>still at number six. So all of this has been

0:07:23.920 --> 0:07:26.680
<v Speaker 1>of a huge benefit to somebody who is selling this

0:07:26.800 --> 0:07:30.120
<v Speaker 1>very delicious idea that just doesn't have any basis in reality.

0:07:30.800 --> 0:07:33.880
<v Speaker 1>Casey Newton, Silicon Valley editor at The Verge, thank you

0:07:34.000 --> 0:07:38.960
<v Speaker 1>very much for joining us. It's my pleasure. I'm Oscar

0:07:39.040 --> 0:07:41.880
<v Speaker 1>Ameres and this has been your daily coronavirus update. You

0:07:41.880 --> 0:07:44.200
<v Speaker 1>don't forget that. For today's big news stories, you can

0:07:44.280 --> 0:07:46.760
<v Speaker 1>check me out on the Daily Dive podcast. Every Monday

0:07:46.760 --> 0:07:49.360
<v Speaker 1>through Friday, so follow us And I heard radio or

0:07:49.400 --> 0:07:50.840
<v Speaker 1>wherever you get your podcast