Public health officials are tracking five coronavirus variants circulating in the United States, all which appear to propagate faster than the original strain. Scientists say those variations are the item of mutations spurred by the virus’s spread.

However online, an alternate explanation for the variants has taken hold. Its source: a Nobel laureate who helped discover HIV.

The RAIR article, which was shared widely on Facebook, related to an interview with French virologist Luc Montagnier, who shared that the 2008 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine with his colleagues for his discovery of HIV in 1983. Ever since then, Montagnier has promoted several unverified medical claims, including that long-term antibiotic therapy can cure autism and a”good immune system” is enough to shield somebody from AIDS.

Throughout the meeting, which was done by Pierre Barnérias — a filmmaker who made a documentary filled with debunked conspiracy theories about COVID-19 — Montagnier blamed Legislation for the coronavirus variations.

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“It is an unacceptable mistake,” he said, according to the RAIR translation of the video. “The history books will show that, since it is the vaccination that’s producing the variations”