Twitter was flooded by a network of fake “doctors” who fervently spread fear-based COVID-19 propaganda during the height of the pandemic, a new report by Revolver News has revealed.
Based on the report, several “Twitter doctors” published tweets gaining tens of thousands of online engagement while fear of the COVID-19 virus was at its peak, claiming that they were losing patients to the virus at alarming rates every day.
“The ‘doctors’ posed as ER physicians and were part of the LGBTQ community in some way. They created this hellish/apocalyptic scenario that made it sound as if bodies were piling up in the streets,” Revolver News reported. “Well, this probably won’t come as a huge surprise to you, but those popular ‘ER doctors’ were fake.”
The report cites a subsequent article by the San Francisco Standard, which exposed a popular online doctor known as “Robert Honeyman,” who claimed in a tweet to have lost his sister to the virus — generating 4,000 retweets and 43,000 likes.
One month later, “Honeyman,” apparently a gay man, had lost his husband to COVID-19 as well.
“Sad to announce that my husband has entered a coma after being in hospital with Covid. The doctor is unsure if he will come out,” the account tweeted. “This year has been the toughest of my life losing my sister to this virus. This is the first time in my life I don’t see light at the end of the tunnel.”
The Standard then revealed that the “Dr. Honeyman” and his husband were both fake accounts.
“The transgender ‘Doctor of Sociology and Feminist studies’ with a ‘keen interest in poetry’ who used they/them pronouns was, in fact, a stock photo described on DepositPhotos, a royalty-free image site, as ‘Smiling happy, handsome latino man outside—headshot portrait.’ Their supposedly comatose husband, Dr. Patrick C. Honeyman, was also fake. His Twitter photo had been stolen from an insurance professional in Wayne, Indiana,” the report stated.
There's this account — Dr. Robert Honeyman — who says their sister died of covid in Nov and now their husband is in a coma with covid. I cannot find any record of them anywhere, from any academic institution. On the left is a stock photo and on the right is their profile photo. pic.twitter.com/DFwxVqv9HL
— joshua gutterman tranen (@jdgtranen) December 13, 2022
The fake doctor couple was reportedly part of a “network” of fake accounts that bragged about their LGBTQ+ community ties, advocated for forced masking policies, social distancing, and shamed pandemic critics.
Omg. Have gone down this rabbit hole and can't stop. There's a whole network of these frauds. pic.twitter.com/bQX0qNFHDp
— كاكاكاكاكاكاكاكاكاكاكاكاكاكاكاكاكاكاكاكا (@kookykarthik) December 13, 2022
A deeper dive of the phenomenon first uncovered by self proclaimed “gay writer” Joshua Gutterman Tranen found that another fake account associated with the “doctors” included a fictional man named “Dr. Gerold Fischer,” who sported rainbows, transgender, and Ukrainian flags on his Twitter profile.
Fischer’s now-deleted account described the fictional person as being an “ally for all in the #LGBTQ+ Community. #WearAMask.”
Another fake account, “Dr. Steve ‘Ste’ Ville,” falsely claimed to be affiliated with the University of Antwerp and described himself as an “LGBTQ+ Ally” and “Proud Mask Wearer.”
Reports indicate that the small network of popular COVID Twitter “doctors” had become active during the pandemic and frequently interacted with each other.
Along with expressing support for harsh COVID-19 measures in America, the fake doctors endorsed Communist China’s totalitarian pandemic response.
“Come on china! Stop protesting, I wish we had similar lockdown measures here,” Dr. “Honeyman” wrote in a Nov. 27 tweet.
“The Standard was unable to establish who created the four fake doctors. But perhaps the most alarming aspect of their nonexistence online is that it is also unclear why they were created,” Revolver News reported.
“Could this network of fake doctors be part of a bigger military-grade psyop that was unleashed on the US and the entire world?” the outlet surmised. “At the very least, it was surely a COVID intel op. The million-dollar question now is, who was behind it?”
