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In a shocking turn of events (read that with sarcasm), a viral video spread by conspiracy theorists that claims to show a "crisis actor" faking their COVID death has turned out to be a giant hoax. Who could have seen this coming?
The footage, which has spread wildly on conspiracy theorists' favorite platform Facebook, shows what COVID deniers claim is a staged mass grave in Germany of COVID-19 patients in body bags. In one of the body bags, a person can be seen moving around inside, revealing that the whole thing is fake.
Except for--surprise!--literally every detail of that is wrong, as a bevy of fact-checkers quickly revealed--not that it has made any difference to the conspiracy theorists, of course.
See the video below.
The video is titled with a truly absurd caption.
It reads:
"Crisis actor in Germany forgets he’s filming on TV🙄"
Every word of that caption is untrue.
As fact checks from everyone from PolitiFact to the Associated Press have revealed, the footage was filmed by Austrian news outlet Oe24 in Ballhausplatz in Vienna--which is very much not in Germany. And the scene is not a mass grave of COVID-19 deaths but a protest--and one that doesn't even pertain to the pandemic for that matter.
The protestors were demonstrating against Austria's climate change policies by laying out 49 body bags to represent the predicted number of people who will die every day as a result of climate change. This form of death-themed protest, known as a "die-in," has been around since at least the 1960s.
As for the guy moving around in his body bag, he may be an actor by trade for all we know but he is in the body bag because he's a protestor.
Why anyone trying to fake a mass grave would go to the trouble of actually paying scores of actors to lay still in body bags when they could just, you know, fill them with old issues of USA Today or whatever for absolutely free is anyone's guess.
But spoiler alert: This definitely hasn't occurred to the brain trust constantly telling us all to "do your own research."
Heeding their own advice for about 30 seconds would have cleared this up quite easily, but naturally they couldn't be bothered--and people clapped back hard on social media.
You seriously couldn't even bother to take 3 seconds to check if this was true before believing it? It was a staged climate change protest in Austria. https://leadstories.com/hoax-alert/2022/02/fact-check-this-man-was-not-crisis-actor-playing-dead-in-germany-it-was-climate-change-protest.html\u00a0\u2026— \ud83d\udd79\ufe0fVoodoo Lounge (@\ud83d\udd79\ufe0fVoodoo Lounge) 1644390332
https://www.dailydot.com/debug/conspiracy-theory-newsletter-02-14-2022-covid-crisis-actor-video/\u00a0\u2026pic.twitter.com/iu8gjnWHZm— J N Olson SSG USA #lgbwiththet #ArrestTrumpNow (@J N Olson SSG USA #lgbwiththet #ArrestTrumpNow) 1644894400
Faked newscast claiming from Germany as a Covid death when it's a climate change protest in Vienna, Austria. These tools have no shame.\nhttps://apnews.com/article/fact-checking-661739618421\u00a0\u2026https://twitter.com/Starofthenort13/status/1490715391655653383\u00a0\u2026— Mike Confoy \ud83c\uddfa\ud83c\uddf8 \u2260 \ud83c\uddf7\ud83c\uddfa (@Mike Confoy \ud83c\uddfa\ud83c\uddf8 \u2260 \ud83c\uddf7\ud83c\uddfa) 1644882692
A useful rule of thumb for cases such as this: It\u2019s never crisis actors. They\u2019re made up.pic.twitter.com/rTznA9xLpw— Alistair Coleman (@Alistair Coleman) 1644279716
pic.twitter.com/qCmN4h0XEg— David "lets go brandon" (@David "lets go brandon") 1644421755
Sure bud reporting. Here is the original newscast from Vienna, Austria from a climate change protest. Do you ever check your sources or is spreading bs something you prefer because you love the taste?https://www.oe24.at/video/news/wien-demo-gegen-klimapolitik/509553935\u00a0\u2026— Mike Confoy \ud83c\uddfa\ud83c\uddf8 \u2260 \ud83c\uddf7\ud83c\uddfa (@Mike Confoy \ud83c\uddfa\ud83c\uddf8 \u2260 \ud83c\uddf7\ud83c\uddfa) 1644881979
A video of a man emerging from a body bag is being passed off as a Covid \u2018crisis actor\u2019 not doing as they\u2019re told. Except it\u2019s not.pic.twitter.com/1kY1C4jpWU— Alistair Coleman (@Alistair Coleman) 1644274492
If people would logically think: why would you need 'dead' 'crisis actors'? Just stuff body bags with newspaper or something— J(ust) C(oz) \ud83c\udf65 (@J(ust) C(oz) \ud83c\udf65) 1644349514
As of this writing, both the Facebook post that began this nonsensical conspiracy theory and the account that created it are still live on Facebook, despite the social media giant's repeated promises to do more to combat the constant spread of disinformation on the platform.