A recent OpEdNews post depicted Anthony Fauci and "Big Pharma" as mass murderers whose crimes demand a Neuremberg-style tribunal and hanging. "Let's see them swing," the author wrote.
Similar claims appear frequently on OpEdNews, are commonplace on Fox News, circulate widely on social media and are fodder for right-wing political campaigns. In September, Wyoming State Senator Anthony Bouchard called for Fauci to be tried and executed, writing, "After the prosecution, the chair, the gallows, or lethal injection?" In November, Jackson Lahmeyer, a candidate for the US Senate from Oklahoma, echoed the same charges, calling Fauci a mass murderer and "the greatest con man in the United States of America." Lahmeyer, a pastor, merely called for Fauci to be imprisoned.
The list of charges against Fauci is a long one, but the current ones center on his involvement both in creating the SARS-CoV-19 virus and forcing dangerous, death-dealing vaccines on the public. In anti-vaccine circles, the deadliness of the "clot shots" and "death shots" is an established truth from which the need to try and execute Fauci follows naturally. However, from time to time seemingly factual claims are made to bolster the case. For example, the OpEdNews post cited above includes the following striking assertions and provides links to their sources:
"Airline pilots are dropping dead at an unprecedented 1750% higher rate than normal after the jab."
"Soccer players and other athletes are collapsing at sixty times the normal rate after the vax from heart failure."
There is a "higher death rate from the clot-shots than from the disease".
Over the course of the pandemic, I've spent more time than I would have liked visiting such sources and fact-checking similar claims. I'd like to present what I've found about a few of these pronouncements and, more importantly, about how such claims are generated--the recipe, so to speak, for the Kool-Aid that millions of Americans seem to have swallowed.
Claim: "Airline pilots are dropping dead at an unprecedented 1750% higher rate than normal after the jab."
This shocking indictment of the Covid vaccines didn't just appear on OpEdNews. I googled "airline pilots dying 1750% covid vaccine" and found 13,100,000 hits.
The story seems to have started on the Hal Turner radio show on December 8. His source was a real publication, the Airline Pilot Magazine, published by the Airline Pilots Association International (ALPA), which represents 61,000 active and retired pilots. Like many trade magazines, they publish an annual in memoriam list of members who have passed away. This year the list included the names of 111 pilots who died in 2021, 6 who died in 2020 and 1 who died in 2019.
Turner, followed avidly by everyone who has re-posted and who continues to spread this story, took those numbers to mean that 111 pilots died in 2021, following--and therefore linked to--the roll-out of the vaccines, a shocking number when compared to 6 in 2020 and just one in 2019. Those 105 excess deaths in 2021 compared to 2020 were both unnecessary and cruel; as Turner commented, "Pilots were coerced into taking the Covid-19 shots under threat of losing their jobs."
The 1750% number was apparently derived by comparing the difference between the 2021 and 2020 deaths to the 2020 deaths: 105/6 = 17.5. That factor of 17.5 was then made even more dramatic by turning it into a percentage: 17.5 x 100 = 1750%.
It must be bitterly disappointing to many anti-vaxxers to learn that what the numbers actually mean is that ALPA received timely notices of the deaths of 111 of their members who died in 2021, somewhat belated notices about 6 pilots who had died in 2020, and an even more belated notice about a pilot who had died in 2019.
Here's what ALPA has to say (complete with a lovely aviation-related turn of phrase):
In every edition of Air Line Pilot magazine, we honor ALPA pilots - both active and retired - who have flown west. Based on verified information provided by their families, we reported the loss of more pilots in both 2019 and 2020 than in 2021 [my emphasis]. We report the losses in our magazine as we receive information from the families. The information in one magazine edition does not provide a complete report of the total losses for each of the listed years. We salute every member for their service and honor their memories."
(Note: You can view every article as one long page if you sign up as an Advocate Member, or higher).
2
2
1
