Bartholomew's Notes

One of the best episodes from the first series of Frasier is “Death Becomes Him“, in which Frasier Crane becomes so disturbed by the sudden death of a physician from a heart attack that he gatecrashes the doctor’s funeral reception in a futile attempt to discover an underlying cause. To his dismay, the doctor’s relatives tell him that the deceased had no history of heart disease, high blood pressure or high cholesterol; that he was a “total health fanatic” who avoided fattening desserts; and that he regularly attended a gym and played basketball four times a week:

Gail: Gary was in phenomenal shape.
Bobbie: He didn’t smoke, never touched caffeine…
Allen: Did you know he had less than 10 percent body fat on him?
Frasier: My goodness. Has anybody checked to see if he’s really dead?

The show satirises a natural human instinct to seek out existential reassurance in the face of the knowledge that, despite however we live our lives, death may still come like a thief in the night. Surely, that victim of illness or sudden death must have done something that I can avoid or that doesn’t apply to me?

This tendency is now being ruthlessly exploited by anti-vaxxers and vaccine alarmists, who appear now to attribute any unexpected natural death to Covid vaccination. In the UK, for instance, Aseem Malhotra now claims that Covid vaccination likely explains “all unexplained heart attacks, strokes, cardiac arrhythmias, & heart failure since 2021”. On Twitter, he amplifies and endorses any anecdotal claim that he believes supports this assertion. Meanwhile, GB News has run a sarcastically titled segment called “Nothing to See Here”, in which Mark Steyn cited a random selection of sudden deaths. News of any celebrity death on social media attracts comments either speculating or asserting that Covid vaccination was the cause.

In the USA, meanwhile, we have “Died Suddenly”. As noted in the Guardian:

One phrase that is picking up steam in the anti-vax world is “died suddenly”, which may be used in official media reports to talk about any sudden death, making it harder to moderate automatically.

A Died Suddenly Twitter account, which was verified through the paid Twitter Blue program, plans to release a documentary on Monday that promotes vaccine misinformation.

In a trailer for the film, 12 people are shown fainting or seizing, with the implication that they died from vaccines. In fact, at least four of the people shown did not die, and there were no links to the vaccines in their fainting episodes.

The trailer also shows footage of Megyn Kelly, a SiriusXM host, talking about her sister’s heart attack. But the trailer doesn’t show Kelly’s discussion of their family history of heart attacks.

A detailed debunking of the trailer was posted to Twitter by “The Real Truther” at the end of October: clips the trailer uses include the on-court (and non-fatal) collapse of basketball star Keyontae Johnson in December 2020, before vaccines were even available; a woman who fainted at a train station in Argentina (actually due to low blood pressure); a royal guard fainting while standing vigil at Queen Elizabeth’s coffin (a well-known phenonmenon caused by standing still for long periods); and comedian Heather McDonald fainting on stage (due to not eating and drinking). (1)

The trailer describes the documentary as a “Stew Peters Network EXCLUSIVE”, and it follows his earlier efforts Watch the Waters and These Little Ones. The former apparently claims that “the coronavirus is not a virus, but a synthetic version of snake venom that evil forces are spreading through remdesivir, the mRNA COVID-19 vaccines and drinking water to “make you a hybrid of Satan”, while the latter is concerned with how “millions of children vanish each year”.

This context might suggest a marginal effort unlikely to be embraced by the wider community of Covid vaccination alarmists – indeed, Robert Malone (who had previously been on Peters’ show) denounced Watch the Waters, leading Peters to allege that Malone is working for the CIA. However, Peters is sponsored by Mike Lindell of MyPillow and election truther fame, and Lindell’s support of anti-vaxxers was noted a few days ago by Business Insider:

MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell recently became a sponsor for the prominent anti-vaxxer Dr Sherri Tenpenny, an example of Lindell’s growing penchant for funding fringe media figures.

…In June, Slate [sic – actually Salon] described Tenpenny as an “adviser” to the pillow salesman, without specifying any details of the arrangement.

…Lindell and Tenpenny met, she said, at sessions of the “ReAwaken America” tour, which as The Guardian reported showed a growing alliance between conservative Christians, Trump supporters and anti-vaccine activists.

More on ReAwaken America here.

UPDATE: Within the vaccine alarmist movement,  Died Suddenly has come under fire from a sociologist named Josh Guetzkow. On his Substack blog, Guetzkow describes it as “trash”, and his post has been reposted by Toby Young on his Daily Sceptic website. Guetzkow’s view has also been endorsed by Aseem Malhotra and Clare Craig. Craig speculates that the documentary may be “an intent to muddy the waters”.

Note

1. A similar collage, called “Until Proven Otherwise” was uploaded to Twitter earlier this month by “Texas Kate” and endorsed by Malhotra. The first example given is Charlbi Dean, an actress who died aged 32 of a lung infection and who previously had had her spleen removed. Also in the video is a 15-year-old girl named Jorja Halliday, who died on the day she was due to receive her Covid vaccination; in this case there was a misleading headline (“15-year-old girl died suddenly from Covid complication on day of her vaccine”) which was later amended to “15-year-old girl died suddenly from Covid complication on day her vaccine was due”.

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