FACT-CHECK: Pfizer CEO has not announced plans to reduce the world’s population by 50%

Claim: Pfizer CEO announces plan to reduce the world’s population by 50%

Source: Viral video

Verdict: FALSE

Researched by Gifty Tracy Aminu 

Has the Chief Executive Officer of Pfizer, Albert Bourla announced plans to reduce the population of the world by 50% in 2023?

A 30-second long video footage shared by a now-suspended Twitter account, on May 28, 2022, supposedly shows Albert Bourla making the claim and the clip is now being cross-published on Facebook and WhatsApp.

“The first week we met, in January of ‘19, in California to set up the goals for the next five years, and one of them was, by 2023, we will reduce the number of people in the world by 50%. I think today the dream is becoming a reality,” Albert Bourla can be heard saying in the viral video.

Fact-check

Checks by GhanaFact show that Albert Bourla did not make those remarks. But rather the video has been deceptively altered and his words are being misrepresented.

After listening to the full 33 minutes and 15 seconds long World Economic Forum conversation that hosted the CEO of Pfizer, at no point did he make those claims.

Between minutes 1: 56 – 3: 00 of the full video available on the YouTube channel of the World Economic Forum, Albert Bourla is heard highlighting the ambition of the company to make medicine affordable to 50% of the world’s population.

“ I think it’s really fulfilling of a dream that we had together, with my leadership team, when we started in ‘19. The first week we met, in January of ‘19 in California, to set up the goals for the next five years, and one of them was, by 2023, we will reduce the number of people in the world that cannot afford our medicines by 50%. I think today this dream is becoming a reality,” he partly said in the World Economic Forum summit conversation on May 25, 2022, in Davos, Switzerland

The short viral video clip seems to have been cut out of the full video and presented in a misleading context.

Verdict

The claim that the CEO of Pfizer has announced plans to reduce the world’s population by 50% in 2023 is FALSE and the video is MISLEADING.