Viral video promotes baseless vaccine depopulation theory

Viral video promotes baseless vaccine depopulation theory

(Reuters) - A viral hour-long video contains several baseless assertions about Covid-19 vaccines, including that the shots have resulted in increased mortality and stillbirth rates, a decline in birth rates, and unusual fibrous blood clotting in the deceased in the US, UK and Canada.

However, there is no evidence that mortality rates have surged or that stillbirths have increased as a result of Covid-19 vaccines.

Meanwhile, vascular health experts told Reuters that coagulation of blood is a common phenomenon after death.

The film, titled “Died Suddenly”, linking myriad news reports of unexpected U.S. and UK deaths to Covid-19 vaccines without evidence, was released online on Nov. 21. It has been seen more than 12 million times (here) and widely shared across social media (here, here, here, here, here).

It recycles old claims and memes which Reuters and others have routinely debunked.

The film’s central claim is that tech entrepreneur Bill Gates and a “global elite” are depopulating Earth by using vaccines to kill people, a recurring misinformation theme based on Gates’ promotion of vaccines and other health services, which Reuters previously debunked nKBN27X2VR .

Experts who spoke to Reuters also counter many of the film’s other claims, including that birth rates are declining because death and stillbirth rates have increased since Covid-19 vaccinations began, as well as that fibrous blood “clots” found in the bodies of the deceased are a result of the shots.

NO EVIDENCE FOR VACCINE LINK TO MORTALITY

Sources quoted in the video suggest that all-cause mortality has increased drastically because of “sudden deaths”. News reports about cardiac arrests and unexpected deaths are then shown on screen and are baselessly attributed to Covid-19 vaccines. Multiple cases shown concern individuals who are still alive or who died of unrelated causes.

A TV news report and online article shown in the film (archive.ph/r5odG, timecode 21:32) claim all-cause mortality among 18 to 64-year-olds has risen by 40% from pre-pandemic levels. The statement is based on a report from one U.S. life insurance company concerning working-age people in the U.S., however it did not attribute the rise to vaccines (here).

Professor Jeffrey Morris, director of biostatistics at the University of Pennsylvania, told Reuters that while the company’s report does show high excess deaths in late-2021, they found the vast majority of those were Covid-19 deaths during the Delta surge.

There is no evidence of any connection between the deaths and vaccination, Morris said (here).

He told Reuters: “I’ve yet to see any study showing excess deaths higher among vaccinated young and middle [aged] adults than unvaccinated [with comparisons adjusting for confounders].”

Reuters previously addressed unfounded claims that excess deaths of young people in the U.S. increased dramatically due to the Covid-19 vaccine rollout nL2N2VS1BI .

US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) data shows increased excess deaths since the start of the pandemic associated with Covid-19 itself (here and here).

“There is no way to attribute the increase to vaccination or any single specific cause,” the CDC’s National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS) added. “That said, the large increase in Covid deaths (and total deaths) for the latter part of 2021 does coincide with the Delta and Omicron waves.”

In the UK, there is no evidence of an increase in all-cause mortality for the 18-64 age group, a spokesperson for the Office for National Statistics (ONS) told Reuters.

“There has been an increase in all cause deaths, for all ages, between 2021 and 2022, but nothing like the levels quoted” in the claims, the ONS spokesperson said.

ONS data shows no evidence of an increase in the risk of death or cardiac-related death after vaccination in people aged 12-29, according to the spokesperson (here).

There have been 55 deaths involving Covid-19 vaccines causing adverse effects in England between March 2020 and October 2022. Of those, 47 had this cause listed as the underlying cause of death (here, U12.9).

Meanwhile, more than 45.3 million people in England have received at least one Covid-19 vaccine dose (here).

BIRTH AND STILLBIRTH TRENDS UNCHANGED

The video claims that birth rates globally have declined, repeating a regularly debunked narrative that Covid-19 vaccination is causing a rise in miscarriages and stillbirths (here, here and here).

It suggests that intrauterine fetal demise (when a fetus shows no signs of life in the womb) and stillbirth (a baby delivered after 24 completed weeks of pregnancy with no signs of life) were “extremely uncommon” prior to 2021 (timecode 55:20) and have since risen dramatically.

An alleged whistleblower nurse from a “major hospital” in Fresno, California, also claims in the film that the hospital witnessed 22 fetal demises in one month (timecode 54:51) in comparison to what they claim is a previous average of “one to two every three months”.

However, a California Department of Public Health spokesperson told Reuters: “There has been no significant increase in California stillbirth rates since the introduction of Covid-19 vaccines, and no stillbirth certificate has mentioned ‘Covid-19 Vaccination’ – or any variation in the cause of death literals, either in Fresno or the state as of November, 2022.”

A graph shown in the film (timecode 56:59) also suggests stillbirths increased more than five-fold in 2021. It doesn’t provide a source but claims the data is from Waterloo, Ontario in Canada.

Dr Victoria Male, Lecturer in Reproductive Immunology at Imperial College London, told Reuters that data from Ontario shows the pre-pandemic stillbirth rate was 4.7 per 1,000 births and the post-pandemic stillbirth rate was 4.8 per 1,000.

Male has compiled a list of several studies by different groups which investigate Covid-19 vaccine safety in pregnancy, including some that compare stillbirth rates among those who are vaccinated and those who are not. Some of the studies “find that those who are vaccinated in pregnancy actually have a lower risk of stillbirth,” she told Reuters.

“In short, those who are vaccinated in pregnancy are no more likely to have a miscarriage or stillbirth than those who are not vaccinated,” she added.

UK figures here show there were 2,597 stillbirths in 2021, which is similar to the number of stillbirths recorded in 2019 (2,522), according to the ONS.

In the UK and the U.S., rates of stillbirth have not changed notably since Covid-19 vaccines were introduced. In England and Wales, the stillbirth rate rose from 3.8 per 1,000 births in 2020 to 4.1 per 1,000 in 2021 here. This was well below the 2007 rate of 5.2 per 1,000 in the UK. Similarly, in the U.S., fetal mortality after 20 weeks gestation occurred at a rate of 5.74 per 1,000 births in 2020, which the Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) says is not significantly different from the rate of 5.70 per 1,000 in 2019.

In contrast, some data suggest a link between Covid infections and risk for stillbirths. The CDC has not yet published its 2021 stillbirth data, but it highlighted anecdotal reports of rising stillbirth rates from March 2020 to September 2021, particularly during the period when the Delta variant became predominant. The risk of stillbirth increased among the Covid-19-infected. Similarly, an international data review found increased stillbirths and maternal deaths during the pandemic in the period before Covid-19 vaccines were widely available.

The film also features claims of “substantial data” from whistleblowers from the U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) allegedly showing a 300% increase in miscarriages over the five-year average (timecode 25:27), which Reuters previously debunked here . After a review of Defense Medical Epidemiology Database (DMED) data, the Armed Forces Surveillance Division (AFSD) found 2016-2020 data was underreported, resulting in the appearance of a significant increase in all medical diagnoses in 2021, a DoD spokesperson said.

While stillbirth rates remain constant, global birth or fertility rates, including in the U.S., have been declining for decades.

In 2020, the U.S. recorded its lowest number of births since 1979 – a common trend also seen in Europe before, and during the pandemic. Provisional CDC data for 2021 suggests a small upturn in U.S. fertility, but no significant changes, however.

Similarly, ONS figures for England and Wales here show that the total fertility rate crept up in 2021 for the first time since 2012, to 1.61 children per woman in 2021, from 1.58 in 2020. Live births remained stable, with 624,828 in 2021, up 1.8% from 613,936 in 2020, but below the 2019 total (640,370).

The figure remains in line with a long-term trend of steadily decreasing births since long before the pandemic. Global birth rates have been dropping for decades, and small fluctuations during the pandemic period show a possible upturn but no major changes.

NO EVIDENCE VACCINE CAUSING ‘FIBROUS STRUCTURES’

The film features recycled claims that embalmers and funeral directors in the UK, US and Canada are seeing increasing anomalies in deceased vaccinated people’s blood – a recurring theme that has been debunked previously.

A U.S. embalmer claims to have increasingly found clots in bodies, some of which he alleges have received Covid-19 vaccines (timecode 8:50). He adds that their blood contains “microclots” which look “dirty, almost like it has little fine grains of sand or coffee grounds” (timecode 14:49).

Others in the video present what they call “white fibrous structures” pulled from people’s veins and arteries after death, including an anonymous embalmer in Canada who says (timecode 14:30): “Everyone I’ve embalmed over a year had fibrous mass clots.”

Another individual claims that the vaccines kill people within five months as a result of veins being “clogged up” with “amyloid protein material” (timecode 48.15).

Embalmers and funeral directors, however, are “unlikely to be in possession of much of the information spoken about” in the video, according to the National Association of Funeral Directors (NAFD) in the UK.

The NAFD told Reuters: “Funeral directors/trained embalmers are not pathologists and so are not qualified to speak about what is found in the body of a deceased person. The conditions of arteries that embalmers find will depend on how long it has been since the person died and the cause of death, which funeral directors and embalmers are not routinely advised of as they are not part of the death certification process.”

Funeral directors and embalmers do not have access to vaccination or medical records, according to the NAFD and British Institute of Embalmers (BIE).

Karen Caney, general secretary of the BIE told Reuters: “We have not seen an increase in reporting of any adverse concerns or indeed increase of clots present in deceased from our members. Our Members would be in a position to recognise them if this happened, but we have received no such reports.”

Moreover, such clots are “extremely common” in the dead due to the natural stages of decomposition, Caney added.

This was also the case before the pandemic, Caney told Reuters. Due to the legalities surrounding registration and reporting of death along with requirements for cremation in the UK, embalming can take place more than 7 days from death.

The “fibrous structures” identified in the film are a known phenomenon that occurs in deceased people regardless of vaccination record, according to Professor Saskia Middeldorp, Head Department of Internal Medicine at Amsterdam University Medical Centers and Professor Hugo ten Cate from Maastricht University Medical Center (here). Both are experts in internal vascular health.

Middeldorp told Reuters: “Interestingly, the embalmers speak of ‘blood clots’, whereas there is no evidence that these are true pathological clots or contributed to death.”

Only medical doctors trained as pathologists can diagnose blood clots and their relationship with a death, she added.

VERDICT

False. The film does not provide evidence that the global elite are depopulating the world through Covid-19 vaccines. Its claims that Covid-19 vaccines have caused declining birth rates and an increase in stillbirths are unfounded. Fibrous blood clots found in the deceased are common, according to experts.