Major social networks are still scrambling to take down a new COVID-19 conspiracy theory video that has been making rounds online since last week. The so-called "Plandemic" video is produced in the style of a documentary and is filled with misinformation about where the virus originated and how it spread.

Facebook, YouTube, and other social media networks have been quick to remove the video, but the spawn of coronavirus deniers constantly re-upload the clip and re-titling it to avoid the detection of content moderators.

The video contains harmful information, claiming that beaches have "healing microbes" that can help cure the virus; using masks and gloves makes people more vulnerable; and that the coronavirus had been released from a lab and is not naturally occurring.

In it, an interviewer named Mikki Willis interviews Judy Mikovits, a figure best known for her anti-vaccine activism in recent years. The video touches on several topics favored among online conspiracists at the moment, filtering most of them through the lens that vaccines are a money-making enterprise that causes medical harm.

Such claims are not supported by reliable medical and scientific advice.

Misleading rumors about the COVID-19 pandemic have been one of the issues that add to the weight of the global health crisis. Many have been persuaded by misinformation, and unfortunately, politicians, celebrities, and other high-profile figures are guilty of starting fake news.

What makes the "Plandemic" video more problematic, however, is that it includes people passing themselves off as experts, which got people into thinking that the information contains "must be real." Conspiracy theories styled into documentary films have become so popular these days, and a marked evolution from the dodgy medical advice being forwarded on WhatsApp at the start of the pandemic.

Quite often, it's the highly sensationalized content that catches the attention of the masses, rather than content from reliable and credible media outlets. For this reason, social media sites have been doubling their efforts in removing this kind of content as it may cause harm and likely worsen the current situation. But such efforts may benefit the film-maker, who claims that there is a large-scale conspiracy to hide the truth.

In a post saying the 26-minute video is an excerpt from a future full-length documentary, he urges readers to download the video directly and re-post it elsewhere, "in an effort to bypass the gatekeepers of free speech."

Since the start of the pandemic, social media platforms have made updates to their content policies to curb the spread of misinformation.