Does video show person posing as COVID-19 victim in body bag? Fact Check

ByCraig Haley

A video claims to show a person posing as a victim of the coronavirus pandemic in a body bag while smoking a cigarette.

The video is being circulated online by conspiracy theorists who claim there is a global cover-up by governments and the media and that the COVID-19 pandemic is not real, and as such have to “hire” people to pose as COVID-19 victims.

FALSE

An example of the video being circulated online is below.

They’re preparing dead Rona bodies for the news… One is smoking a cigarette.

However, despite the claim that the bodies are “being prepared for the news”, this is actually a small video taken behind the scenes of a music video in Russia. The body bags, some of which appear to be occupied by real (and very much alive) people, are being used as props for a music video by rapper Husky (Хаски) for a song titled “Ever”. In fact its the same song that is being played during the videos claiming to show the fake COVID-19 victims.

You can see that music video here (warning: viewer discretion advised) where at the end, the rapper appears to lower bodies from a high rise building into an orange dump truck (the same truck as in the circulating video) before driving off.


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A news report from Ren.tv about the music video can be seen here featuring the same location. The video was filmed in Meshchansky District in Moscow which can be seen on Google Maps here.

And finally, the video that is circulating was actually taken from the Instagram Stories account of Kirill Groshev, the cinematographer of Husky’s music videos. Debunking Twitter channel HoaxEye captured a screen video of it here.

Videos of the music video have also spurred at least one other hoax that claimed bodies of the coronavirus were being lowered into a dump truck.

Since the video shows footage taken from the set of a music video, it doesn’t show anyone posing as a COVID-19 victim, and as such we rank this claim false.