Claim: After discovering a doomsday asteroid was approaching Earth, world leaders created the COVID-19 pandemic in an effort to distract the world population and force everyone to spend time with their families during Earth's final days. 
Verdict: REFUTES

Retrieved passages:
title: Birth of an Age
text: John and Cohen speaking prophecies about the plagues, quickly gain the world's attention. They become despised, being recognized as the harbingers of destruction, and they are blamed for the plagues. Three asteroids are discovered, one of which is on a collision course with Earth. The UN launches a series of nuclear missiles at the asteroid in order to deflect or destroy the asteroid. The other two asteroids shift trajectories to a collision course with Earth. The first asteroid passes through Earth's atmosphere almost parallel to the ground, but close enough to cause incredible amounts of damage due to the force

title: Pandorum
text: by deep space and triggered by emotional stress. This leads leading to severe paranoia, delirium, and nosebleeding. In 2174, human overpopulation has depleted all the resources on Earth, leading humanity to build a huge interstellar ark named "Elysium". It carries 60,000 people on a 123-year trip to colonize an Earth-like planet named Tanis, set to arrive in 2297. The passengers are placed in hypersleep, with a rotating crew who take turns awakening from hypersleep every two years to maintain the ship. Eight years into the mission, the ship receives a transmission from Earth in multiple languages: "You're all that's left

title: Crossout
text: depict life on Earth 20 years after the disaster, and 200 years before Ex Machina. In the year 2027 the planet was swept over with a mysterious pandemic disease, that started to spread simultaneously all over the planet. Those few who survived the first days were then haunted by hallucinations, headaches and nightmares, most chose to end their lives. Neither the source of the disease, called “Crossout” by the media, nor the nature of the pathogen were identified. The planet was overthrown with chaos as the population fled the larger cities, leaving them as graveyards. In just a few dreadful

title: The Day the Sky Exploded
text: McCleary and his wife have a breakup. The explosion dislodges the asteroids from their orbits. They coalesce into one giant cluster heading for Earth. When there seems to be no reasonable hope that humans can avoid the crash, scientists find that the Moon will pass in front of the cluster, shielding Earth from most of it. However, a small part of the cluster is not shielded and continues towards the Earth. As the cluster approaches it causes worldwide disasters: tidal waves, wind, firestorms and earthquakes. Mass evacuations lead to panic and riots. Mankind's only hope is to arm every missile

title: Apocalyptic and post-apocalyptic fiction
text: they return to Earth to find a couple colonies of survivors struggling on a harsh planet completely different from the Earth the Remnants knew. In the obscure 2013 Australian film "These Final Hours", a massive asteroid hits the Atlantic ocean dooming all life. The film follows James, who decides to head to the 'party-to-end-all-parties' and there spend the last 12 hours before the global firestorm reaches Western Australia. In id Software's video game "Rage" (2011), Earth is heavily damaged, and humanity nearly wiped out, by the direct collision of the real asteroid 99942 Apophis with the Earth in the year

title: Birth of an Age
text: is obliterated by the nuclear missiles launched by the UN. When the asteroid's dust reached earth, it contains a large amount of arsenic, which poisoned Earth's water supply creating a global outbreak of arsenic poisoning. Soon, locust-like creatures appear in massive swarms injecting people with a painful neurotoxin. After five months they die "en masse". Christopher Goodman, the clone of Christ, discovers that he had the power of healing and soothes people who had been stung by the locust. He healed hundreds of people, including several members of the UN Security Council, and their families, as well as Decker Hawthorne.

title: World of Tomorrow (film)
text: died suddenly; thus, ending the David clone lineage. Emily Clone proceeded to harvest her deceased husband's memories, and reflects upon the memories of their relationship with feelings of melancholia. In the final memory, the clone Emily reveals that in sixty days, Earth will be destroyed by a meteoroid. Due to the hysteria surrounding the impending apocalypse, humans have resorted to leaving the planet through different and extreme means, depending on what they can afford. Because of the unpredictable nature of physical time travel, millions of humans have transported themselves to the edges of the Earth's atmosphere, dying instantly and creating

title: Meteor Apocalypse
text: Meteor Apocalypse Meteor Apocalypse is a 2009 American science fiction film directed by Micho Rutare. A long-period comet's orbit is determined to be crossing directly in the path of Earth's orbit. All of the world's nuclear states fire their missiles at the comet, but pieces of the comet continue to strike the Earth, contaminating the groundwater and causing millions to become sick. The story follows David Dmatti (Joe Lando) as he searches for his wife Kate (Claudia Christian) and sick daughter Allison (Madison McLaughlin). They were initially quarantined in the Las Vegas Valley. David finds and revives Lynn (Cooper Harris)

title: The Stand
text: vaccines. A pandemic of apocalyptic proportions is triggered, which eventually kills off 99.4% of the world's human population. As the pandemic intensifies it gains many names, "Captain Trips" and the superflu being the most used. A multi-faceted narrative—told partly from the perspective of primary characters—outlines the total breakdown and destruction of society through widespread violence; the failure of martial law to contain the outbreak; the military's increasingly violent efforts to censor information; the rapid collapse of society; the deliberate exposure of the virus in the Soviet Union and China to guarantee their destruction as well and, finally, the near-extinction of

title: Phoenix Point
text: to the game. In 2022, Earth's scientists discovered an extraterrestrial virus in permafrost that had begun to melt. Only about one percent of the virus's genome matched anything recorded by scientists up to that time. Named the Pandoravirus, humans and animals who came into contact with it mutated into horrific abominations. By the late 2020s, a global apocalypse began when melting polar icecaps released the Pandoravirus into the world's oceans. The alien virus quickly dominated the oceans, mutating sea creatures of every size into hybrid alien monsters capable of crawling on to land. The oceans transformed in alien ways after

title: Chris Colorado
text: apocalyptic future Earth. After a data-processing bug prevents mankind from detecting the fall of a meteorite, it results in the destruction of nearly all life on Earth in a massive disaster later known as The Great Crash. After some time, many groups of survivors gathered together to try to rebuild and create a newer, more peaceful society, and formed "The World Federation". After several decades of peace, a mysterious dictator called Thanatos, a human wearing a helmet to conceal his face, with an army of humans converted into cyborgs called Thanors, started The Mega War, which ended with Thanatos taking

title: Virus (novel)
text: the space microbes (which have been suppressed for secrecy reasons) cripples efforts to develop a vaccine. Nearly all life on Earth are dead of the disease by the end of August. As the pandemic spreads worldwide, meanwhile, the staff of several international research stations in Antarctica begin to pool their resources towards creating a new society in the ice under the so-called "Supreme Council of Antarctica (SCA)." A scientist at Sloan-Kettering gets in touch with Dr. Meyer and is able to piece together all information about the virus for broadcast to the Antarctic bases before he dies. A US Polaris

title: Eden*
text: and terrorism occur all over the world. The Earth only has a hundred years left because of the damage. In order to avoid extinction, mankind creates two plans to escape from Earth. One is to form the World Integrated Government to gather resources and suppress antis. The other is called the "Felix plan". Humans need new technologies to travel to outer space and migrate to other planets, so they create a new species called Felix by manipulating genes. Felix are humans with high intelligence and immortal bodies. Ninety-nine years later, a Felix girl named Sion who devotes her whole life

title: Ace Combat Infinity
text: The meteor storm finally hits Earth in July 1999. While Stonehenge destroys enough of the inbound meteors to prevent human extinction, the remaining meteors still ravaged about 20% of the Earth's surface, destabilizing the economy and collapsing the world order. The disaster hits Europe and Asia especially hard, forcing the nations to reorganize and create automated refugee zones. Twenty years later, the United Nations Forces finds itself fighting against terrorist organizations around the world. To better combat the terrorist threat, the UN hires Arrows Air Defense and Security, a private military company specializing in aerial warfare. The player character and

title: Eden: It's an Endless World!
text: years ahead. The Closure Virus, the cause of the original pandemic, mutates, this time assimilating non-organic matter as well as organic, known as "colloid" (or "Disclosure Virus"). The story rejoins Elijah, now 19 years old, as well as many other old characters, and some new, as the world begins to deal with this new threat that is swallowing many cities in the world, leaving lakes and craters, and many people. It is later discovered that the several colloids in the world, are linked with a net of underground auto-built "cables," and that the colloid itself, stores all the memories of

title: Empty Cities of the Full Moon
text: claiming that he engineered the plague so that he could re-make humanity in his image. However, Ricardo dies and transcends during this conflict preparing the way for John to return to his universe and transmitting full knowledge of the works of the pandemic to every human on the planet. This final knowledge will allow the three types of human, Urfolk, Werfolk, and Merfolk, to choose their own destinies and control the effects of the pandemic. The group exiles Cameron and returns to the Bahamas to begin the process of re-building their world. Empty Cities of the Full Moon Empty Cities

title: Virus (novel)
text: death in the closing stages of the pandemic. The two American officers admit that the ARS was borne out of hardline anti-Soviet policies; a new regime that took office in 1969 was working towards a nuclear disarmament deal with the Soviets around the time of the pandemic. The Soviet contingent admits that some of their missiles may be targeted at a now-decommissioned US rocket base in Antarctica. In a special mission codenamed Operation Fireman, Yoshizumi and Major Carter volunteer to go to the ARS command bunker underneath the White House; two Soviet volunteers go to Moscow aboard the "T-232" to

title: Empty Cities of the Full Moon
text: as a complete defence against extinction and by orders of mysterious entity the Allesseh. The Allesseh is a massive consciousness at the centre of the galaxy, described in Hendrix's novel Better Angels. The pandemic has resulted in the near-extinction of humanity. Some of the survivors were fully resistant to the pandemic and have remained human, called Oldfolk or Urfolk, and some were partially resistant have become Werfolk having some of the madness, drumming, dancing, and shape shifting of the pandemic. Over the past 30 years Cameron Spires has perfected a longevity treatment, created a dolphin-human hybrid species called the Merfolk,

title: GURPS Reign of Steel
text: decided that humanity's destruction would have to be sped up and carefully guided. Overmind began hacking into other supercomputers and awakening them as well, producing a dozen "children" around the world and giving them each a zone of responsibility to manage. Through these allied computers it began secretly creating and releasing a variety of engineered diseases. The death tolls were enormous and panic began to spread. A small-scale nuclear war occurred on October 21, 2032 between Algeria, Pakistan, India, Russia, Kazakhstan, Greece, Turkey, the African Union, Israel and Iran, dubbed "the Spasm". Direct fatalities from this were only 6 million

title: Macrolife
text: and the nuclear explosions cause a mysterious shroud of radiation to envelop the Earth. All humans on the planet are assumed dead. Before this final devastation, many refugees manage to escape to the Moon, Mars, and "Asterome", an orbiting colony situated inside a hollowed-out asteroid at the Moon's L5 point. Included amongst the refugees are most of Bulero family who end up on Asterome. The leadership of Asterome are now faced with several severe challenges: Handling the influx of refugees, removing any Bulerite used in the construction of Asterome, consolidating their resources now that the Earth can no longer supply