Principia claims the Coronavirus pandemic was pre-planned and with purpose; Fact Check

Recently in late September, an article published on the Principia Scientific International claimed that the pandemic was pre-planned and was created with purpose. The exhaustive article has listed down points to base its claims. It was then shared by many and one such is the Madison Lyme Support Group.

The claims it has made are backed by groups of doctors, scientific journals, among others. This article has created quite a storm on the internet. Digiteye India took it up to check each of the claims made in the article.

Fact Check:

Quoting a Germany based group of 500 doctors, Doctors for Information, the article starts with “The Corona panic is a play. It’s a scam. A swindle. It’s high time we understood that we’re in the midst of a global crime.” The article also attributes to another group of 600 doctors based in Spain called Doctors for Truth. Both these groups in their viral video, have talked about how masks should only be worn by doctors, caregivers and other front-line workers.

This information is not as per the WHO guidelines and even the Indian Union Ministry of Health and Family Welfare (MoHFW). We have already debunked a similar claim. It’s true that a similar mandate was issued in the earlier stages of the Covid-19 pandemic, but when the pandemic reached the community transmission stage, the WHO and the Indian government changed the guidelines. Not only is this harmful but the violation of the mandatory mask-wearing rule has been made punishable under the Epidemic Diseases Act (India), 1987.

Plandemic Video

The article talks about a documentary called Plandemic. They claim that the documentary “exposes COVID-19 as a criminal operation, is supported by over 27,000 medical doctors!” We had debunked the Plandemic video earlier. The video advises against mask-wearing, hand washing, and vaccines. The video has been mixed with conspiracy theories and opinions of anti-vaxxers.

The video also contains clips of Dan Erickson and Artin Massihi who claim that the death rate of flu in 2017-18 is similar to the death rate of covid-19. In a joint statement by the American College of Emergency Physicians and the American Academy of Emergency Medicine, these views were condemned categorically as it stated: “these two individuals are releasing biased, non-peer reviewed data to advance their personal financial interests without regard for the public’s health”. 

Patent Application

It points out how a testing method COVID-19 was patented in 2015. Richard A Rothschild, in 2015, had invented a method whereby with the acquisition and transmitting of biometric data (e.g., vital signs), it can be analysed if the user has any viral infection. The patent being talked about here is an actualization and a revision of this previous invention in the light of COVID-19. Contrary to what is being talked about, this has not been given a patent number yet. It has been published on September 3, 2020, with the publication number 20200279585, stated Justia Patents.

“In 2017 and 2018 – two years before COVID-19 – hundreds of millions of test kits for COVID-19 were distributed worldwide”, quotes the article. The article has a screenshot of the World Integrated Trade Solution. While the WITS website did post this, it is a part of their nomenclature. Article number 902780 includes every single-use medical equipment used in “clinical laboratories for In Vitro Diagnosis, Colorimetric end tidal CO2 detector, sizes compatible with child and adult endotracheal tube”. The WITS website clarifies that the dataset currently for 2017 and 2018 includes all “existing medical devices that are now classified by the World Customs Organization as critical to tackling COVID-19” and not just COVID-19 test kits. All kits have been clubbed together. 

World Bank Project

The article also talks about the COVID-19 Project which is supposedly ending in 2025. The World Bank has undertaken this project and it expects to finish this by March 2025. The project is not what the article presents it as. The project has been taken up to “to prevent, detect and respond to the threat posed by COVID-19 and strengthen national systems for public health preparedness”. It aims at analyzing the current pandemic and taking future steps and measures which will reduce the burden on nations and their resources. With prevention and limiting the spread of the virus, it will also look after its implementation. The project was approved on April 2, 2020.

Prediction by Gates?

Quoting US virologist Antony Fauci, Bill Gates and Melinda Gates, it says how they had “guaranteed a pandemic within the next two years”. The article refutes claims of overpopulation and states how “most of the earth is uninhabited”. Not only these three personalities, many public figures and scientists had warned of an incoming pandemic but this does not mean that they had engineered the pandemic.

It said a National Geographic report talks “how experts were identifying conditions that could lead to the introduction of new, potentially devastating pathogens—climate change, massive urbanization, the proximity of humans to farm or forest animals that serve as viral reservoirs—with the worldwide spread of those microbes accelerated by war, the global economy, and international air travel”. Similarly, in 2015 a study published in Nature had warned of a “deadly virus” and numerous such studies can be traced in scientific journals.

The article states how Event 201 was a “coronavirus pandemic exercise”. Event 201 was conducted by the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security in partnership with the World Economic Forum and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation on October 18, 2019, in New York. This exercise illustrated the areas “where public/private partnerships will be necessary during the response to a severe pandemic in order to diminish large-scale economic and societal consequences”. The event simulated an outbreak of coronavirus from bats to pigs which shifted onto human to human transmission, thus, causing a pandemic. The simulation starts in pig farms of Brazil and is exported by air travel to Portugal, the United States, and China and then to many other countries. This, in no means, implies that they introduced the virus.

Funding breakthroughs

While on December 19 2019, Bill Gates did tweet that he was “particularly excited” for “one of the best buys in global health: vaccines” but this referred to the amount raised for diseases such as tuberculosis, HIV, and malaria. On the link embedded in the tweet, the Gates Foundation website mentions how “funding breakthroughs were especially critical at a time when it’s proven difficult to keep global health at the top of the agenda.”

It also states how a song predicted coronavirus pandemic in 2013. Many popular shows and movies had shown events which share similarities with the current scenario. The Simpsons, The Big Bang Theory, Tangled are few movies which showed similar situations. In books, we have End of Days by Sylvia Browne (2008), The Eyes of The Darkness by Dean Koontz (1981), which depicted similar incidents. This, however, does not mean that the present Covid-19 pandemic was pre-planned.

The Global Preparedness Monitoring Board (GPMB) report is also quoted where a paragraph mentions “The United Nations (including WHO) conducts at least two system-wide training and simulation exercises, including one for covering the deliberate release of a lethal respiratory pathogen”, and quotes the article.

The GPMB report ‘A World at Risk’ published in September 2019 “explores and identifies the urgent needs and actions required to accelerate preparedness for health emergencies, focusing in particular on biological risks manifesting as epidemics and pandemics”. While this line does feature on page 39 of the report, it is a simulation exercise just like Event 201. It is not a foreshadowing or the heralding of a pandemic.

Conclusion:

The Guardian calls groups like the Principia Scientific International as “fringe sceptic groups”. Most of the information here has been misinterpreted. Our rating – Misinterpretation.