CLAIM: French virologist Luc Montagnier has said all people vaccinated against COVID-19 will die within two years.
Source: Viral WhatsApp text
VERDICT: False. At no point in the cited interview did the French scientist say COVID-19 vaccines would kill inoculated people within two years. Instead, Montagnier, who has made some controversial remarks about viruses, advances arguments against COVID-19 vaccines which have been challenged by other experts. His comments have been manipulated to create that false impression.
The viral message, which is attached to a linked article by Canadian news site LifeSiteNews, is headlined: “All vaccinated people will die within 2 years.”
The message goes further to state that “Nobel Prize winner Luc Montagnier has confirmed that there is no chance of survival for people who have received the vaccine.”
The text purports to quote Montagnier saying:
“There is no hope, and no possible treatment for those who have been vaccinated already. We must be prepared to incinerate the bodies.”
At no point in the interview does Montagnier say any of this. These are made up quotes.
What did the scientist actually say?
Montagnier (88), who jointly won the 2008 Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine, along with Françoise Barré-Sinoussi, for their work in identifying the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV), has called ongoing mass vaccinations against COVID-19 “a mistake.”
“It’s an enormous mistake, isn’t it? A scientific error as well as a medical error. It is an unacceptable mistake. The history books will show that, because it is the vaccination that is creating the variants,” the virologist said.
Experts disagree
Several experts have dismissed Montagnier’s comments as lacking scientific basis.
Vincent Maréchal, professor of virology and researcher at Sorbonne University’s Saint Antoine Research Center in France (Inserm / Sorbonne University) says Montagnier’s assertions are “totally absurd.”
Variants, Maréchal explains, “are not created by vaccines”. He adds that some of the notable coronavirus variants identified in the United Kingdom, Brazil and South Africa spread before vaccination started in those countries.
Shahid Jameel, a virologist at India’s Ashok University, says there is no scientific evidence to support Montagnier’s latest claims.
“This seems to be another disturbing theory propagated by him without any credible scientific evidence. His unscientific views were further amplified by media channels that denounced vaccinations and promoted conspiracy theories,” Jameel said.
“The fact is that all vaccines, including vaccines against COVID-19, save lives. So it is worth repeating here that everyone everywhere should take COVID-19 vaccines as soon as these are available to them.”
Conspiracy theory channels
It should be noted that the channels that carried Montagnier’s comments, RAIR Foundation, Planetes360 and LifeSiteNews routinely publish conspiracy theories and fan anti-vaccine sentiment. LifeSiteNews was permanently removed from Facebook in May 2021 for spreading COVID-19 misinformation.
CONCLUSION
It is not true that Luc Montagnier said all people vaccinated against COVID-19 would die within two years. His actual controversial statement, that vaccines were creating new coronavirus variants, has been dismissed by several experts. The websites that carried the claims are all known for spreading false information on COVID-19.
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