Facebook users have been sharing an apparently fake transcript of a legal hearing in which the mayor of Calgary, in Alberta, Canada, supposedly calls Covid-19 “a hoax”.
Fact checkers in the US can find no record of this hearing. The mayor, Naheed Nenshi, also told them it did not take place.
Moreover, in his other public statements, Mr Nenshi has indicated many times that he does not think Covid is a hoax. He has encouraged social distancing and vaccination, and shared photographs of himself wearing a protective mask.
The fake transcript is titled “Testimony Taken from the Mayor of Calgary Alberta Canada”. It claims to come from an unnamed “Calgary court” and involves questions from an unnamed “lawyer”, who asks what evidence was received about Covid and whether it was real, to which “Mr Nenshi” supposedly replies “None” and “No”.
Check Your Fact searched the records from several Canadian courts and found no evidence that this hearing ever took place, and was told by the Calgary mayor’s office that it was a “fake testimony that never happened”.
Bearing all this in mind, along with Mr Nenshi’s public efforts to reduce the impact of the virus, it seems that the transcript itself is a hoax.
Covid, sadly, is real.