A video claiming to be from 1956 did not predict Covid-19

27 October 2020

What was claimed

A film from 1956 predicted the Covid-19 pandemic

Our verdict

The video is not from 1956, it’s from February 2020.

We’ve been asked to look into a Facebook post which claims to show a film from 1956 which apparently predicts the Covid-19 pandemic.

This video is not from 1956, nor was it made prior to the pandemic starting. It was first posted online in February 2020.

The creator of the video told the AFP news agency  that it was made as a satire of “the anti-scientific thinking and conspiracy theories that emerged as soon as Covid-19 began to become a serious concern worldwide.”

As AFP reports, it was subsequently shared widely around the world as being a real film from the 1950s.

This article is part of our work fact checking potentially false pictures, videos and stories on Facebook. You can read more about this—and find out how to report Facebook content—here. For the purposes of that scheme, we’ve rated this claim as false because this video is from 2020, not 1956.

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