A number of videos by , most notably "Plandemic," address the origins of COVID-19 and the purported harms of mask-wearing. Her personal/political/non-COVID beliefs are her own, and will not be discussed here.
Regarding COVID, she makes three virology/immunology claims, and one public health claim:
- Mask-wearing "activates the virus," continually re-infects the wearer, and risks killing the wearer via carbon dioxide
- The cell line in which the new coronavirus is cultured, Vero E6, originated in a U.S. military laboratory and was recently transferred to Wuhan
- SARS-CoV-2 doesn't cause COVID-19; it's actually a retrovirus which was a contaminant in influenza vaccinations given in 2013-2014
- Predicting a pandemic, and planning a response to one, is suspicious
A cloth mask is not a steel vault
Mikovits states that a mask causes the wearer to re-inhale their own carbon dioxide -- "a toxic gas!" Fortunately, it's not a steel-lined trap. Just as you can suck air in through a mask rather easily, so can you exhale air out through it. If you'd like to feel the difference, clamp your hand over your mouth and nose and take a stroll. Also, exhaled air is about 16% oxygen, versus atmospheric air which sits at 21%. It's not pure carbon dioxide, like the clouds on Venus.
You also cannot infect yourself with your own virus. If it comes out of you (i.e., virus droplets in exhaled breath) putting it back in you won't make you any sicker. Being exposed to the atmosphere -- in fact, leaving its host cell at all -- is a very precarious thing for a virus. It risks drying out its protective moisture coat and falling apart. Taking a brief, exciting tour out your nose, into your mask, and back inside does not energize it, but instead risks inactivating it entirely.
Lots of scientists use the same tools -- like pipettes or cells developed in Japan in 1962
Cell lines usually die, so it's really handy if you can find some which won't -- immortal cells. Some such cells were isolated by Japanese researchers in 1962 from the kidneys of green monkeys. Line #6 divided more slowly, making it useful for slow-growing viruses. Now called Vero E6, they've been a cornerstone of medical research ever since, and are used in every country of the world which bothers to conduct virology research. There is no connection to the U.S. military/USAMRIID other than they, too, use them. The military also uses light bulbs and pipettes and wear shoes.
We aren't making all those Corona beer jokes for nothing
Mikovits states that not everyone with SARS-CoV-2 gets sick, and people without the virus also develop respiratory infections and pneumonias. Therefore, she says, it can't possibly cause COVID-19. Yes, indeed. Many people mount a competent immune response and knock that sucker straight out of the park, and never become clinically ill (asymptomatic cases). Other people have other diseases. Not all that glitters is gold, and not all that coughs is COVID.
If in doubt, look at the amazing electron micrographs of the coronavirus in the alveolar cells in the lung. Look at the pictures of the viruses' spike protein doing damage in deceased patients' lung cells.
When all you have is a hammer (or plasmid), everything is a nail.
Judy Mikovits' background is highly relevant to understanding how she arrived at the last half of the third. She worked as a virologist and became interested in an obscure, harmless mouse retrovirus which she hypothesized was the cause of chronic fatigue syndrome. She claimed she identified this virus in the blood of CFS patients, had many papers published, and enjoyed the spotlight that came with the bombshell discovery of a viral/infectious origin of a chronic condition. . Namely, two researchers pulled her actual samples from CFS patients and found bacterial plasmid DNA mixed up with the retroviruses. (Bacterial plasmids are the FedEx of the laboratory: a very useful delivery service humans hijack to drop genes in where they want.) Meaning? She spiked the punch. She dropped the virus in completely artificially. It was all knowingly fraudulent. Her papers were retracted, her funding was yanked, she was fired, and she was briefly jailed in a dispute with her ex-employer. Her version of this story is a frequent subject of her books and videos.
She also asserts that vaccines are contaminated with mouse viruses which have been dormant for years and are the real cause of COVID. There is no evidence for any of this whatsoever. For starters, vaccines for viruses are not developed in mice for mass production: some are grown in eggs/chick embryos, and others are grown in the Vero cells mentioned above. If any of Mikovits' claims were true, we might see monkey or chicken viral contaminants -- but we don't.
I've got a cunning plan
Do you own an extinguisher for putting out fires? Do your children do active shooter drills at school? Does the military run training exercises in the event of land, air, and sea invasions? Does planning a response to any of those very unfortunate events actually cause them to happen?
For infectious pandemics: viruses are constantly trying to "jump hosts." It's a certainty that one eventually will. It's a certainty that bacteria continue to acquire resistance to antibiotics. It would be a dereliction of duty -- some serious hand-washing, but not the good kind -- to not have a response ready.
Jennifer Kasten, MD, is a practicing pediatric pathologist with degrees in medicine from the Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons, infectious disease epidemiology (CID) from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, a year's postgraduate work in the mathematical modeling of infectious disease at Oxford University, and a master's in the history of medicine and science, also from Oxford University.