n the midst of the COVID-19 coronavirus disease pandemic, millions of viewers in America and elsewhere were exposed in May 2020 to a 22-minute installment from the forthcoming film “Plandemic,” a conspiracy-based “documentary” holding that (as synopsized by The Washington Post) “doctors and experts shaping public policy in response to the novel coronavirus pandemic have silenced dissenting voices and misled the public for sinister reasons.”

The primary (and virtually sole) source offered by filmmaker Mikki Willis for the contentions made by the movie in that 22-minute installment is Judy Mikovits, who over the course of the segment spins a tale of a government conspiracy led by Dr. Anthony Fauci, who has served as the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases since 1984 and has been the prominent public face of the White House Coronavirus Task Force.

That one installment of “Plandemic” offers far too many bits of misinformation to debunk in a single fact check, so we’ll start here by attempting to unpack the introduction of Mikovits the film offers in its opening in an attempt to establish her as a credible expert voice.