I'm Scott Reeder and I'm a prop Master on film and television shows my name is Robert Oswald I am a professor of molecular medicine at Cornell University I'm Michelle Rockwall and I'm a family medicine physician and I was the target of a covid-19 conspiracy theory [Music] I posted a video about retractable props so when we're doing a hospital scene and someone needs to be injected with the medication we have a fake needle you know when I say retractable I mean that the needle goes into the syringe there's a tube with a spring in it so
that makes the needle pop right back up it was a popular video it was seen by millions of people so when vaccines first became available that's when The Conspiracy Theory started people started without my permission using footage from my retractable prop Tick Tock and using it out of context saying this is how politicians are gonna fake vaccinations to make the Sheep comply [Music] this all started around Christmas time of last year 2020 there was a post written by someone unknown it was put in various places in social media the assertion of the post was that
you know the coronavirus does not exist and that it was the coronavirus was just part of a global conspiracy that involved the Chinese and involved election from it then got my name attached to it I'm not a virologist I've never worked in in this field so why they put my name on it I have no idea [Music] I started my social media accounts back when I was pregnant with my son Mason because I felt kind of isolated in pregnancy since then over the past almost four or five years it's grown to almost 32 33 000
followers I think right now this is the post that I posted after we realized that we miscarried and this was December 1st that I posted this it's hard to tell people you lost your baby but I wanted to erase the stigma around that a little bit I woke up one day in February to one of my community members saying that she had seen a picture of me circulating highly on Facebook and it was insinuating that the vaccine was what caused my miscarriage when in fact I had actually had the vaccine three weeks after I'd miscarried
this is what they said on Facebook that I got the shot on December 21st but then January 24th is when I lost my baby but in fact it was December 1st so they changed the dates as a scientist I find it very frustrating and when something like this happens when when no matter your best efforts to get the the truth out there people think that is still a conspiracy it's frustrating and you know demoralizing to a large a large extent it definitely pissed me off I was very uh surprised that it had spread so quickly
with all the misinformation and my face being the poster child for that conspiracy when I saw that my post was taken out of context and was circulating on social media I was really angry people were using my story to make women think that if they got the vaccine that they were going to have a miscarriage or become infertile which is not true it was at a point where I was finally starting to get back to normal whatever that is after a miscarriage and starting to feel happy again and then all of a sudden you know
everything just rushes back all at once and you know I was angry that someone would do this and I was sad and it was really hard it was really hard so how do you correct the record that's that's the big question copy and paste is very useful I copied and pasted a response explaining to people that it was not true that I had nothing to do with it and to look at that post is totally fraudulent I had no one to go to about uh you know someone using your information for misinformation it's real hard
to track people down you don't know where they are you really don't know who to get mad at with my post I could not find all of the Facebook posts or the places that it was shared because as soon as it's shared it's just exponentially just out there I found it just about a handful of them and I directly messaged the people who are posting them and and told them that this is false information some people were really great about it and they apologized and other people were really horrible saying that I killed my baby
and that I was a murderer and just awful things I also contacted Facebook and they responded that it was not a violation of their Community guidelines I honestly think that their guidelines change like days after this happened and it had nothing to do with me because obviously these things are in the works over time taking down accounts or taking down posts is definitely happening more frequently you know I think this is inevitable outcome from having so many sources of information to see Science question like this is sad it's not hard to find that you know
this virus is real you won't find one political joke on my page I avoid it I just want to make people laugh and show them something they've never seen before I'm amazed at what links people go to to prove a point that isn't there I think it is really easy to just shoot off a comment and and not think that there's a human being who's going through you know one of the hardest things a woman can go through there is that really dark side of the internet too where people are praying into the fears of
women and you know the fears of people in general [Music]
