Satirical video is shared as a 1956 public service announcement predicting COVID-19 Pandemic - FACTLY
Sai Krishna Muthyanolla
April 5, 2021
A video is being shared on social media claiming it as the 1956 Public service announcement, alerting the global citizens about the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020. This post claims it as the 65 years old recording that predicted the future plague that is going to originate from an Asian country. Let’s verify the claim made in the post.
Claim: A 1956 Public Service Announcement (PSA) predicting the COVID-19 Pandemic in 2020.
Fact: This video was created in Feb 2020 by Max Patrick Schlienger, a satirist who identifies himself as ‘Ramses the Pigeon’. This video was created with a mash-up of old Hollywood short films. Schlienger described this video as a ‘satirical piece’ that was created with an intention to lampoon the anti-science perspectives about the COVID-19 virus. Hence, the claim made in the post is FALSE.
On reverse image search of the screenshots shared in the post, the extended version of this video was found published in ‘Ramses the Pigeon’ YouTube channel on 01 March 2020. This video was published on YouTube with the title ‘1950’s PSA: “Avoiding the Future Plague”’. The description of the video states “It’s hilarious to look back on what people from the 1950s thought the future would be like. Archival and public domain footage were acquired from Archive.org. Also, yes, I only threw this together because I wanted to have a video upload on February 29.”. ‘Ramses the Pigeon’ shared this video on his Twitter handle with a similar description.
Max Patrick Schlienger, who identifies himself as ‘Ramses the Pigeon’, created this video in Feb 2020. In a Reddit post, Schlienger explained this video as a ‘satirical piece’ that was created with an intention to lampoon the anti-science perspectives about the COVID-19 virus.
In our further research, it is found out that a few clips in the footage were taken from old Hollywood short films. A scene of a household Robot helping a woman to clean her home is taken from the 1940 film ‘Leave It to Roll-oh’. Similarly, a few scenes in the footage found to exist in the film Tornado (1956). From all these pieces of evidence, it can be concluded that the video shared in the post is a satirical video created with a mash-up of old Hollywood films.
To sum it up, a satirical video created in February 2020 is being shared as a 65 years old PSA predicted the COVID-19 Pandemic.