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religion-is-a-mental-illness · 1 year

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By: Jonathan Jarry M.Sc.

Published: Nov 25, 2022

People want to feel like their concerns are heard. Being dismissed can lead to loss of trust, which can send people looking for empathy in the wrong places.

Members of the anti-vaccination movement and of its media arm excel at portraying themselves as “those who care.” The rest of us—scientists, doctors, politicians, journalists—are represented as either apathetic or simply evil. The latest “documentary” to emerge from this movement, Died Suddenly, is an exercise in reframing compassion. It also represents the apogee of conspiritualist ideas, where grand conspiracy theories surrounding vaccines are painted on a canvas so large, they involve a Biblical war between the forces of absolute good and those of pure evil.

Who are portrayed as ringing the alarm for Armageddon in Died Suddenly? Embalmers.

A tale made out of whole clot

The documentary’s smoking gun is the alleged discovery of long, white, fibrous clots in the deceased bodies of people who, we are told, got vaccinated against COVID-19. Sometimes, their blood also looks dirty, like it contains coffee grounds. This claim seems to have originated from Richard Hirschman, an embalmer in Alabama, who spoke about it to The Epoch Times, a frequent vehicle for misinformation and grand conspiracy theories. Hirschman and a few other embalmers testify to their findings in Died Suddenly, with some being blurred out, their voices altered, like they are sharing secrets so damning they’re about to be shipped to their local witness protection program.

Every conspiracy demands its whistleblower, and Hirschman serves as one of many for this documentary. He can boldly speak out while his colleagues self-censor, he tells us, because he doesn’t work for a funeral home. The movie cozies up to the body horror genre by repeatedly showing us images and clips of these lengthy strings of organic matter being pulled out of post-mortem incisions. The power of these alien, rubbery artefacts grows in the telling: in the Epoch Times piece, a cardiologist says these clots have “nearly the strength of steel.” Given the shock that these visuals can give to the untrained eye, it’s no wonder these supposed “vaccine clots” are making the rounds on TikTok.

The problem is that embalmers and funeral directors are not medical professionals. Don’t take it from me, but from the National Funeral Directors Association in the United States, whose representative told me as much, and from Ben Schmidt, a funeral director and embalmer with a bachelor’s degree in natural science. Schmidt wrote a detailed explanation of what is happening here. Clots can easily form after death, as the liquid and solid parts of blood separate and as formaldehyde and calcium-containing water used in the embalming process catalyze clotting. Refrigeration can also be to blame, especially when a rapid influx of bodies due to COVID necessitates longer stays in the cooler as embalmers make their way through their backlog.

Then there are the clots that happen prior to death. Embalmers do not typically know that someone who died was “in normal health,” as is often claimed in the documentary, nor do they reliably know someone’s vaccination status. Blood clots do happen in life, for a variety of reasons. The COVID-19 vaccines made by AstraZeneca and Johnson & Johnson were indeed associated with rare—and I must repeat, rare—cases of blood clots, but risk factors for blood clots in general include obesity, cancer, a sedentary lifestyle, pregnancy, family history, and smoking. Oh, and COVID-19 itself, which you won’t learn from Died Suddenly. This may surprise you, but an American dies of a blood clot every six minutes. Clots, either before or after death, are common.

As anatomical pathology specialist Irene Sansano told a fact-checking website, the clots shown by Hirschman do not look different from the ones pathologists regularly see in blood clot autopsies at the hospital. To know if there really was an uptick in clots seen during embalming, we can’t rely on a scattering of anecdotes. We would need a database to monitor trends, and as Schmidt points out, this database does not exist.

But if the sight of strings of clotted material isn’t scary enough, Died Suddenly is willing to make its title even more manifest by showing us rapid-fire montages of people fainting and seemingly dropping dead. Out of context, these videos are distressing. However, The Real Truther account on Twitter has demonstrated that many of them are not what they seem. The woman who passes out and falls into a moving train? Her name is Candela. She fainted because of low blood pressure and survived with a fractured skull. That young basketball player who collapses on the court? His name is Keyontae Johnson, and his fainting took place on December 12, 2020, before the COVID-19 vaccines were readily available. He has since been medically cleared to play and recently signed with Kansas State. These people are not dead. To borrow a phrase from the conspiracy playbook, we have been lied to.

Given that syncope, the medical term for a temporary loss of consciousness brought about by a drop in blood pressure, affects one in five over their lifetime, and given the ubiquity of cameras in our world, that’s a lot of fainting episodes captured on video that can be used to bolster a narrative that “something’s not right.”

Outside of the documentary, its Twitter account and many more in the anti-vaccination space have used “died suddenly” as a rallying cry. One of the producers of the movie, Stew Peters, interviewed a woman who claimed that Canadian physicians were dropping like flies in the prime of their lives. Peters didn’t mince words: “We absolutely know 100% what is going on. They want to cover it up. The doctors are dying, and they’re dying from these stupid shots.” Their evidence comes from the Canadian Medical Association’s In Memoriam webpage. I had a look. Peters’ interview was released on August 22nd of this year. I looked at the last ten doctors who had been memorialized at this point. For most, the cause of death is not mentioned. For the others, it’s Alzheimer’s, vascular dementia, COVID-19, and a two-year spell with brain cancer. The average age at which these ten physicians died? 82. The youngest was 64. Hardly in the prime of their lives. That same woman making the claim goes on to hypothesize that Alberta was sent the most toxic batch of the vaccines because its residents don’t typically vote for Justin Trudeau. How else to explain its high mortality during the pandemic?

The Died Suddenly Twitter account, which boasts an authoritative blue check mark it received after paying $8 a month, memorializes a long list of people who, we are led to believe, died of the vaccine, including the voice of Batman, Kevin Conroy, who very recently passed away from intestinal cancer. Except that scrolling through these names, it becomes apparent the list includes anyone who died suddenly, who died after a short illness, who died after a long illness, who died of cancer or of an immune condition or of a viral infection. Their vaccination status is often not even known. Basically, everybody dying after the vaccines were rolled out has now been killed by the jab

One of the funeral directors interviewed in Died Suddenly, who now identifies as an anti-vaxxer, tells us to go on Google and type in “died suddenly.” I listened to him and did the exercise.

Disturbingly, I found a 13-year-old boy who died suddenly after collapsing while playing in a schoolyard; a 38-year-old publisher who died suddenly at home, with no known health issues; even actor Joseph Gordon-Levitt’s brother who died suddenly at 36. What I didn’t tell you is that I did the search for the year 2010. Sudden deaths are not new. I even found a particularly distressing example. Her name was Kalina and she had shown no sign of illness before suddenly falling ill and dying that very evening. She was only 25 years old and was the third adult to die from her place of work in a four-month period.

Scary stuff, isn’t it? Except that Kalina was a killer whale who died at SeaWorld Orlando in 2010.

What Died Suddenly does is akin to grave-robbing. It raids online obituaries, with complete disregard for consent or basic journalistic integrity, and stitches a pseudoscientific horror story with the faces of the deceased.

The makers of Died Suddenly don’t want you to think; they want you to feel. For all of the anti-vaccination movement’s admonitions to “do your own research,” the thing that consistently sinks their arguments is doing your own research. It’s fact-checking if what they are telling you is correct.

None of this is new, though the conspiracy they are selling is growing to epic proportions.

Cut from the same clot

Died Suddenly can serve as a teachable moment for those of us who study the post-COVID-19 anti-vaccination movement, to help us recognize its traits and see its progression.

We witness motivated reasoning: starting from the conclusion that the vaccines cannot be safe and looking for evidence that matches the conclusion. We see a thick coating of “after the fact, therefore because of it,” as anybody dying from 2021 onwards is said to be the victim of a vaccine that can kill you instantly, with a delay, or simply worsen a pre-existing condition. The “VAERS scare” tactic is also briefly adopted, as the database of “bad things that happened after getting a vaccine” is easily trawled for hits.

Died Suddenly also features fake experts, a characteristic of science denial. The VAERS scare itself is brought up in the documentary by entrepreneur Steve Kirsch, who is seen stopped by police after repeated, uninvited visits to the private residence of Dr. Grace Lee, the chair of the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices. He tells the cops he’s “a journalist for Substack,” a fancy term for “blogger” if there ever was one. In the documentary, he confidently asserts that no one wants to know what’s in the vaccines and that no journalist has ever asked, “What’s in the vials?” Funny how there was so much worry about what was in the COVID-19 vaccines, their manufacturers released a list of their ingredients at the beginning of the roll-out, which was covered by the mainstream press. But this is the kind of accuracy you can expect from a grown man who literally called me a chicken on his blog for refusing to debate him.

Meanwhile, a military whistleblower tells us that deaths are up 40% in the 18-to-64 age group, pointing the finger at the vaccines. Except that it’s not the vaccines; it’s the COVID-19 pandemic itself. From blood clots to excess mortality, everything caused by the virus is blamed on the vaccines.

Died Suddenly premiered on both Twitter and Rumble, the alternative video platform favoured by conservatives who loudly proclaim their right to free speech, to a combined 8 million views as of this writing. The text box below the documentary is filled with sponsor links that echo the concerns of the people living outside the mainstream: survival food, “manly” supplements, and precious metal investments. There’s also a link to Mike Lindell’s MyPillow company. The subtleties of the anti-vaccination movement have been shed: the box asks viewers to “support anti-vax activism.” The masks are off.

Meanwhile, the movie throws everything onto the conspiracy cork board, with Jeffrey Epstein, Anthony Fauci, Justin Trudeau, Greta Thunberg, and Bill Gates flashing before our eyes, next to mentions of MKUltra and a clip from that infamous Sasquatch hoax video.

A clip of Tom Hanks explaining Malthusian theory during a press tour is borrowed, which introduces us to the ultimate thesis of the documentary: the COVID-19 pandemic was apparently an excuse to roll out a deadly vaccine engineered to decimate our military forces, affect pregnant women, and kill as many people as possible. As Thomas Malthus once wrote, our population will someday exceed in numbers our ability to provide for everyone. The Powers That Be thus had to come up with a solution: an injectable bioweapon.

And this is where conspirituality comes in. As Died Suddenly ramps up to its climax, religious beliefs are made clear and the full scope of the conspiracy is laid out. This is spiritual war, we are told. The depopulation agenda was written by the forces of Evil and it is our God-given role to fight back.

The anti-vaccination movement no longer sees itself as merely opposing an industry; its vociferations are a clarion call for divine salvation.

Those who care

I have already read superficial denunciations of the movie by media outlets that do not address the core claims the movie makes. I get it. The escalation of the anti-vaccine rhetoric into a mad fever pitch is so pronounced, it can leave us speechless. We resort to dismissal, anger, and accusations of widespread idiocy.

I worry that this sort of drive-by skepticism—quick, often smug—, excusable though it may be, plays right into the hand of a movie like Died Suddenly. Its brave “truthtellers” are shown as people who care. They want to prevent deaths. They are tearing through the wall of passivity and the thicket of wickedness they see in order to save human lives. Propped up by the shallow depth of field of the camera, the professional lighting, the unnerving music, and the storytelling power of a good edit, it makes for convincing fodder.

Our casual dismissal of these propaganda pieces doesn’t help, in my opinion. If we want to persuade the people caught in their wake—not the die-hard believers, who can hardly be swayed, but those who are scared yet still willing to listen to reason—we must fact-check with empathy. We must show how easy it is to topple the scarecrows of anti-vaccine propaganda.

We need patience, as hard as it can be to find these days.

Take-home message: - The anti-vaccine “documentary” Died Suddenly alleges that the COVID-19 vaccines are bioweapons meant to depopulate the world by creating clots that kill people suddenly - The clots shown by the embalmers in the movie seem to medical experts to be no different than the clots that commonly occur in life and also after death - Many of the people the movie wants us to believe suddenly died are not actually dead

Because embalmers are the best judges of vaccine efficiency. Like how creationists are the best equipped to debunk evolution.

Apparently even correlation isn’t needed to declare causation.

#Jonathan Jarry #Died Suddenly #antivax #anti vax #anti science #conspiracy nuts #conspiracy theory #conspiracy theorists #conspiracy theories #COVID vaccine #hoax #hoax videos #coronavirus vaccine #blood clot #misinformation #mRNA vaccine #the darkest timeline #religion is a mental illness

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han-solo-cant-dance · 2 years

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#good christian woman #reason number 1 to hate facebook? my dumbass family uses it #thanking my uncle every day for divorcing her #im going to argue on every single one of her posts until she blocks me #shes a who hates anyone not like her #roe #roe v wade #abortion #tw abortion #covid #covid 19 #coronavirus #covid vaccine #coronavirus vaccine

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heroofthreefaces · 2 years

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got drowsy at 22:30 and went to bed

and couldn’t stay asleep

may be related to getting my third booster and a flu shot this afternoon

anyway tomorrow’s three faces update is ready now

#blogging #sleep #coronavirus vaccine #drawing

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toshootforthestars · 7 months

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(source)

#covid 19 #coronavirus #news #science #please get vaccinated #please get the booster #please stay safe #covid is not over #covid is not a hoax #please look out for each other #covid--19 #long covid #yes the covid vaccine is safe

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pressnewsagencyllc · 23 days

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The ED Sailed Smoothly in the Early COVID-19 Days

TOPLINE: There were few cases of SARS-CoV-2 infections among emergency department (ED) healthcare personnel and no substantial changes in the delivery of emergency medical care during the initial phase of the COVID-19 pandemic. METHODOLOGY: This multicenter prospective cohort study of US ED healthcare personnel called Project COVERED was conducted from May to December 2020 to evaluate the…

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tweedstoat · 5 months

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I gotta say the Orwell quotes are getting way less snappy these days.

"the pandemic is over but covid is a leading cause of death" isnt as good of a soundbite as "war is peace freedom is slavery ignorance is strength"

#covid 19 #coronavirus #anyways always remember MVV friends #mask ventilate and vaccinate #esp you northern hemisphere ppl going into winter

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dontmean2bepoliticalbut · 1 year

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#us politics #twitter #tweet #2023 #coronavirus vaccine #covid vaccine #vaccinate your kids #vaccines #coronavirus #coronavirus pandemic #covidー19 #tim pool #jimmy dore #the serfs #stroke #stroke risks #health #public health

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dontmeantobepoliticalbut · 22 days

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The Supreme Court on Monday rejected the appeal of a Minnesota woman who said she was wrongly denied unemployment benefits after being fired for refusing to be vaccinated for COVID-19 because of her religious beliefs.

The Minnesota Department of Employment and Economic Development determined she wasn’t eligible for benefits because her reasons for refusing the vaccine were based less on religion and more on a lack of trust that the vaccine was effective.

The case shows that the vaccine debate continues to smolder after the pandemic and after the Supreme Court in 2022 halted enforcement of a Biden administration vaccine-or-testing mandate for large employers but declined to hear a challenge to the administration’s COVID-19 vaccine mandate for health care facilities that receive federal funding.

Still pending is an appeal from military chaplains who challenged the military’s vaccination requirement. Although that requirement was later rescinded at the direction of Congress, the chaplains argue they lost out on training opportunities and promotions because they requested religious exemptions.

Minnesota said the unemployment benefit appeal denied Monday wasn’t worth the Supreme Court’s time because benefits have been given to others who were found to have a sincerely held religious objection to the vaccine, so there’s no overarching question to address.

Lawyers for the Upper Midwest Law Center, which represented Tina Goede, had argued she was treated differently by the Minnesota courts than others who successfully appealed their denial of benefits.

REFUSING TO GET VACCINATED, FIRED FROM A PHARMACEUTICAL COMPANY

After refusing to get vaccinated, Goede was fired in 2022 from her job as an account sales manager for the pharmaceutical company Astra Zeneca. Her position had required her to meet with customers in hospitals and clinics, some of which required proof of vaccination.

She told the Minnesota Department of Employment and Economic Development her religious beliefs prohibit injecting foreign substances into her body, which is a “temple of the Holy Spirit.”

A Catholic opposed to abortion, Goede also objected to the COVID-19 vaccine because she believed it was manufactured using or tested on an aborted fetal-cell line. (A cell line from an abortion decades ago was used to create Johnson & Johnson’s coronavirus vaccine. Fetal cells were used in the early testing, though not in the production, of the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines.)

But Goede told the unemployment law judge she wouldn’t receive the vaccine no matter how it was made “because it doesn’t work.”

The judge said Goede was declining to take some vaccines, but not others, “because she does not trust them, not because of a religious belief.”

Goede’s attorneys said the judge had interrogated her religious beliefs with “unfair `gotcha’ questioning."

“He couched his denial of benefits in Ms. Goede’s credibility and then discounted her religious beliefs by determining that her secular beliefs outweighed them,” the lawyers told the Supreme Court.

At the same time the Minnesota Court of Appeals upheld that decision last year, it reached the opposite conclusion for two others who had been denied benefits after asserting religious objections.

Goede’s lawyers said her case presented a question that will reoccur: how to analyze a religious objection to an employer policy when those objections coincide with secular beliefs.

#us politics #news #usa today #2024 #us supreme court #unemployment benefits #COVID-19 vaccine #covid vaccine #coronavirus vaccine #Minnesota Department of Employment and Economic Development #Minnesota #vaccine mandates #Tina Goede #unemployment

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allthecanadianpolitics · 6 months

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Appointments are now available in Nova Scotia for a new monovalent Moderna COVID-19 vaccine, which the provincial government says provides the best protection against the latest strain of the virus.

The updated vaccine is available to anyone six months of age or older who have already completed the primary series of COVID-19 vaccines. It must also have been at least six months since their last known COVID-19 vaccine or infection.

Full article

Tagging: @politicsofcanada

#cdnpoli #canada #canadian politics #canadian news #canadian #coronavirus vaccine #Nova Scotia #COVID-19 vaccine #coronavirus #COVID-19

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daancienttime · 9 months

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The Devastating Impact of Coronavirus on Greek Mythology Girls

Greek Mythology Girls Blog, like many other websites, relied heavily on user-generated content and active community participation. However, with the pandemic spreading across the world, people's lives were disrupted, and priorities shifted. As the health crisis escalated, the interest and engagement of readers dwindled. Many followers faced personal hardships, including health issues, financial struggles, and emotional stress, which understandably diverted their attention away from the blog.

The pandemic's consequences were felt by the blog's contributors as well. Writing and researching content on ancient mythology required focus, creativity, and emotional investment. Unfortunately, the pandemic's anxieties and restrictions made it difficult for writers to maintain their usual levels of productivity and dedication. Some contributors might have faced job losses or increased workload due to shifting work dynamics, leaving them with little time or energy to contribute to the blog.

Another crucial aspect that impacted the blog's reach was the surge in misinformation and sensationalism during the pandemic. With numerous myths and misconceptions about the virus circulating, readers might have been skeptical of consuming content, even if it pertained to mythology. The climate of uncertainty caused people to seek out factual information about the pandemic, often overlooking or dismissing leisurely pursuits like the Greek Mythology Girls Blog.

Furthermore, the pandemic significantly altered online content consumption patterns. People found themselves spending more time on social media and news websites, trying to stay updated on the rapidly changing situation. As a result, niche platforms like the Greek Mythology Girls Blog struggled to compete for attention in an increasingly crowded online space.

The financial impact of the pandemic also affected the blog's operations. Advertisers, who were themselves dealing with economic challenges, reduced their spending on non-essential platforms like the blog, leading to a decline in revenue. As a result, the blog faced resource constraints, hindering its ability to adapt and overcome the challenges posed by the pandemic.

Despite these setbacks, the Greek Mythology Girls Blog attempted to adapt to the new reality. They might have shifted their focus to discussing how ancient myths and legends could provide valuable insights and comfort during challenging times. They could have also used their platform to raise awareness and funds for pandemic-related causes or support their writers who were facing difficulties.

As the pandemic eventually receded, there might have been opportunities for the blog to regain its footing. The enduring allure of Greek mythology and a sense of community amongst its followers could have helped revitalize the platform. Additionally, they could have explored innovative ways to diversify content, engage with readers, and expand their reach.

#greek mythology #coronavirus #coronavirus washington state #coronavirus washington state update #coronavirus vaccine #how coronavirus vaccine works #history of the entire world #coronavirus usa cases #what coronavirus vaccine is approved #history of the entire world i guess #where did coronavirus come from #coronavirus usa #coronavirus documentary #novel coronavirus #coronavirus america #documentary about coronavirus #mythology #history of the world

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