Nearly two years since the first COVID-19 case was detected, some people are still pushing the conspiracy theory that the pandemic is a hoax, despite 800,000 deaths and 55 million confirmed infections in the U.S. alone.
The false narrative that COVID-19 doesn’t exist took off in May 2020, after the “Plandemic” documentary produced by a widely discredited scientist promoted misinformation surrounding the virus and its origins. Since then, variations of the claim have continued to spread online, recently resurfacing amid the spread of the highly contagious omicron variant.
“If we were in a real pandemic people would be dying in their homes by the thousands, hazmat teams would be removing bodies daily, mass grave sites would be everywhere,” reads a screenshot of a tweet that was shared to Facebook on Dec. 28, 2021, and accumulated more than 600 reactions within a day. “In over two years we have seen nothing like this anywhere in the world. Stop calling this a pandemic, it’s a lie.”
The original Dec. 20, 2021 tweet generated more than 3,000 likes. Claims that the pandemic is “fake” have gained traction among supporters of former President Donald Trump, who have previously falsely claimed that the spread of the virus is a coordinated effort against the former president.
But the COVID-19 pandemic is not a "lie" or a hoax, as the post claims. Data shows COVID-19 has infected and killed millions of people across the world, and scientists...
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