A video about the artificial origin of coronavirus is gaining popularity on the Internet

The other day, conspiracy theorists who believe in the artificial origin of the coronavirus were presented with a grand gift: a video was circulated on the Web where an employee of the global pharmaceutical giant leaked secret information: the company’s laboratories are tirelessly working on virus mutations to earn their bread. That is, they create new strains with one hand, and drugs from them with the other.

Conspiracy theorists are celebrating, remembering Big Pharma and swine flu, and vaccinations. Scientists are in habitual horror from the level of literacy of the population. “MK” figured out the scandal raging in social networks.

The reason for the scandal was a video that allegedly recorded a private conversation allegedly by an employee of a large pharmaceutical giant, Jordan Walker, who went on a date with a girl and decided to impress her by giving her a whole heap of secrets in a restaurant. At the beginning of the video, he says that the company has an idea to develop new strains of coronavirus in order to create new vaccines in advance and cut coupons. At the same time, an employee of the company complains that such research is extremely dangerous: a mutated virus can easily “bye-bye” from the laboratory – and do various bad deeds.

At the end of the two-minute story, people with cameras burst into the restaurant where all this is happening (!), and the “company employee” immediately starts screaming that he lied to show off in front of the lady, demands the police and initiates a fight. How did the people with cameras working for the anti-vaccine resource Project Veritas, long known for scandalous publications, know that one of the participants in the date would suddenly start making sensational statements? Well, you never know. Suddenly, journalists of the publication are on duty in all eateries in case someone starts to give out state secrets.

Despite a bunch of oddities associated with the video, it went for a walk around the world. The pharmaceutical giant even had to officially answer: they did not conduct any research related to the “directed evolution” of the virus or the acquisition of any new features by it. Although, as in all scientific laboratories in the world, when developing new drugs, they study the possible properties of the virus and its stable mutations, including under the conditions of mathematical modeling. Experiments are also being conducted with SARS-CoV-2 infected cells to see if the virus can mutate to new resistant variants. In general, everything is like everywhere else where antiviral drugs are created. And there is no information about employee Jordan Walker on the company’s website at all.

All these explanations, of course, did not satisfy the supporters of conspiracy theories. There are traditionally a lot of such people in Russia, and today they arrange real battles in social networks, savoring the details of a viral video. “In fact, they are creating a new bioweapon!” – concludes Irina P. “Well, who would doubt it! My family and I have already been sick 2-3 times this winter with an infection similar to covid. The current, thank God, is very light or just light. And yet, slight intoxication, cough with mucosal edema, and malaise were felt. It is logical to assume that the strains were slightly different. Perhaps H1N1 was also picked up, ”Konstantin talks about his experience of infection with mutants created in biolaboratories. “Didn’t you know that avian and swine flu were created by pharmaceutical companies?” – shows a rare awareness of a permanent member of the medical (!) Group in the social network, hiding behind the abbreviation DOC.

In the scientific groups, meanwhile, slightly different comments. Here are some of them. “Yes, at what ratio of bones to the brain in the head can one seriously believe in this?” “After this stuffing, the number of people who believe that covid was specially created in laboratories and sprayed all over the world will increase.”

…Believing that viruses are created by evolution, of course, is not at all interesting. Although it can be useful to conduct elementary fact-checking. To begin with, Project Veritas conducts “investigations” using provocation, covert filming and other illegal means, and has already been caught more than once in the publication of unverified facts, forgeries and edited videos in which everything is turned upside down. And, by the way, due to fake news, he lost the courts.

“The authenticity of the video is, in principle, unverifiable, the content is with signs of manipulation,” notes a well-known therapist, military doctor Alexei Vodovozov. – But it instantly became viral, because they “reveal the truth.” Yes, yes, this is exactly how it usually happens: a high-ranking employee of one of the largest pharmaceutical companies comes to a bar and absolutely openly tells how they are Frankenstein there, creating new variants of the coronavirus and immediately harp new vaccines for them. And all this in the name of Satan, of course. In Russian social networks, the video has become incredibly popular. What can we say by looking at it? Absolutely nothing. Filmed from an uncomfortable angle, it is almost impossible to distinguish people, it is even more reasonable to hear something sane. Well, yes, traditionally low technical quality. All this indicates indirectly that the video was originally intended for manipulation: here is a poorly recognizable video sequence, and we will tell you what is there. The video is said to be one Jordan Trishton Walker, director of research. 30 Second Job Challenge: Find this high-ranking company employee on the Internet. And there is none. Even if you use different spellings of the name. The video leaves the impression of being thoroughly cut and mixed. Is there a source, a complete record? Even if we assume that such a conversation took place, one can also easily assume what exactly a certain high-ranking employee could answer, in what terms, and how they could then be fun to play with in a video editor.

Vodovozov sums up: “It is impossible to say what kind of person is in the video, whether he is real at all (at least in theory), and that this is not a hired actor; without seeing the source of the video, it is impossible to say what exactly was discussed there and in what context certain issues were discussed. Plus, the quality of the video, as well as other circumstantial evidence, suggests that everything was originally done precisely to manipulate public opinion, which they immediately did.”

The scientific journal Tech ARP also analyzed the viral video and came to the same conclusions. They noted that if Walker exists in reality, the mentioned position does not involve the development of vaccines. In the original video, he nowhere says that the company deliberately causes the virus to mutate, and viruses do a great job of mutating themselves. Working in a virus lab to test new drugs is normal. It is impossible to predict the dominant mutation. And in general, there is no point in trying to “predict” the next version of the coronavirus, since any modern vaccines can be updated in a couple of days.

However, scientists are well aware that the conspiracy theory cannot be refuted: after all, any refutation is organically built into the conspiracy theory, strengthening it.