Bogus Anti-Vaccine Video Goes Viral
There have been more than 13 billion doses of COVID-19 vaccines administered worldwide, including more than 600 million in the United States. The vaccines have saved an estimated tens of millions of lives.
Yet, there seems to be no end to disinformation about these life-saving vaccines.
The latest example is an hour long video called "Died Suddenly" from the mind of Stew Peters, who once claimed that COVID-19 was caused by snake venom secretly injected into the water supply by the Catholic Church and government agencies. Spoiler alert: That's not true.
Peters' latest video is racking up millions of views across major social media platforms, such as Facebook and YouTube, and niche platforms, such as Rumble and Gab. It’s also been promoted by high-profile anti-vaccine campaigners, including Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s Children’s Health Defense and Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene.
But the video provides no support for its theory that people are dying suddenly from COVID-19 vaccines, as FactCheck.org staffers Saranac Hale Spencer, Jessica McDonald and Catalina Jaramillo found out after teaming up to review the video.
A central claim in the video is that embalmers have been noticing unusual clots in dead people. But there is no evidence that the clots are related to vaccination, nor are they necessarily abnormal. Many of the clots shown, in fact, appear to be postmortem clots, or blood clots that form after death, which would have nothing to do with vaccination or why someone died.
The video also repeats numerous falsehoods that have been previously debunked, including claims that athletes are dropping dead and pilots are causing plane crashes because of COVID-19 vaccination.
Read the full story, "‘Died Suddenly’ Pushes Bogus Depopulation Theory."
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For our story on "Died Suddenly," Sara interviewed one of the funeral directors in the video who says he has noticed unusual blood clots in dead people and suggests that they were victims of COVID-19 vaccines. Richard Hirschman, a licensed funeral director and embalmer in Alabama featured in the video, asks, “How come, all of a sudden, these things are happening in so many people?” But he admitted to Sara: “I can’t prove what this is. I’m not a doctor nor a scientist — I never said I was.”
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Since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February, Congress has approved a total of $66 billion in aid to support Ukraine. That includes the $40 billion supplemental appropriations legislation passed in May — the only standalone aid bill — and $13.6 billion passed as part of a much larger omnibus appropriations bill in March and $12.35 billion in a continuing resolution bill enacted in September to fund the government through Dec. 16. Read more.
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Our own Saranac Hale Spencer participated in a panel discussion Dec. 1 at Reuters NEXT on the impact of misinformation.
Reuters NEXT is a global forum where experts discuss issues confronting us and offer potential solutions.
The panel on misinformation was moderated by Christina Anagnostopoulos, who is the U.S. fact-checking editor for Reuters, and included Reuters Technology Editor Ken Li and Mark Stephens, a lawyer with an expertise in free speech.
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Subject: COVID vaccine
Reader: Is Pfizer hiding what is in the vaccine?
FactCheck.org Director Eugene Kiely: No. The full ingredient list for any authorized COVID-19 vaccine can be found on the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention website and in a variety of documents on the Food and Drug Administration’s website, including in a fact sheet for vaccine recipients that’s available in numerous languages.
You can read more about this subject in our item, How do we know what ingredients are in a vaccine? Other articles that may be helpful include: A Guide to Pfizer/BioNTech’s COVID-19 Vaccine and A Guide to Pfizer/BioNTech’s Pediatric COVID-19 Vaccine for Kids 5-11.
I’m not sure where you may have heard this about Pfizer, but there have been numerous false claims that have been made about the Pfizer vaccine. As we have written, social media posts have misrepresented the company’s vaccine safety monitoring document and changes that it made to its vaccine formulation to improve stability and shelf life.
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Wrapping Up
Here's what else we've got for you this week:
- "McCarthy Mischaracterizes Trump’s Response to Fuentes Meeting": Asked about Donald Trump’s dinner meeting attended by Nick Fuentes, a white supremacist, Rep. Kevin McCarthy claimed the former president “came out four times and condemned him.” That’s not accurate. Trump had repeatedly said he didn’t know who Fuentes was, but he stopped short of condemning him or his ideas.
- "Posts Mislead on Number of Election Day Votes in Maricopa County": About 540,000 voters went to polling places in Arizona’s Maricopa County on Election Day, including roughly 250,000 who voted in person and over 290,000 who dropped off mail-in and provisional ballots, according to election officials. But online posts falsely claim that while 540,000 voters went to the polls, county officials only counted 248,000 ballots. All the ballots were counted.
- "U.S. Aid to Ukraine, Explained”: When asked whether Republicans would “make it more difficult” for Congress to approve Ukrainian aid, Rep. Mike Turner criticized the $40 billion package enacted in May, saying: “We don’t need to pass $40 billion large Democrat bills … to send $8 billion to Ukraine.” Much more than that, however, was allocated for military support.
Y lo que publicamos en español (English versions are accessible in each story):
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