Original article (in Slovenian) was published on 12/12/2022
A video of a speech by the CEO of Pfizer, published on Rumble, was manipulated to intentionally mislead the public.
Pfizer: We will reduce the global population by 50% by 2023 is the title of a post published on 28 November by a user of the American video platform Rumble with the username lex3016. The post included video of a segment of a speech by Albert Bourla, the chief executive officer of Pfizer. According to the user, the speech was delivered at the World Economic Forum in Davos.
Bourla is heard saying: “When we started in 2019, the first week we met, in January 2019 in California, to set up the goals for the next five years, one of them was to reduce by 2023 the number of people in the world by 50% I think today this dream is becoming reality.” The statement was followed by applause from the audience.
The World Economic Forum (WEF), a Swiss organisation that endeavours to bring together economic, political, academic and other leaders in efforts for sustainable social development, held its annual meeting in Davos, Switzerland in May this year at and Bourla was one of the guests.
In a speech which is published in full on the WEF website, Bourla however talked about the availability of Pfizer’s drugs in the poorest countries. He said the company wanted to halve by 2023 the number of people who cannot afford their drugs.
Analysis of the videos shows that an unknown author cut two seconds of Bourla’s statement from the video and published the doctored video on Rumble, a video sharing platform.
Journalists at Wired, an American magazine, published in 2021 an article on the impact of technology on society in which they analysed content that Rumble’s search engine is automatically serving to users. They found that the recommendations often include content that contains false information and conspiracy theories.
The Rumble user lex3016 has previously shared multiple videos with disinformation about covid-19, including a video on how face masks are not effective against the spread of the virus and how covid-19 is like the flu.
The Rumble video in question was fabricated to intentionally mislead and misinform the public, which is why we have designated it as fake.