Last year, comedian Heather McDonald collapsed onstage while performing in Arizona. The incident, which fortunately hasn’t led to lingering issues, quickly went viral but with an insidious angle. McDonald’s vaccine status was being blamed for the collapse. She had revealed she was triple-vaxxed ahead of the show, and now, she had to spend a considerable time battling misinformation being spread by the likes of Joe Rogan. (McDonald actually knows Rogan, and when she messaged him that he could’ve easily checked on her status by reaching out, he didn’t respond.)
Thankfully, McDonald had a popular podcast, so she could set the record straight, but after a lull, her viral moment resurfaced. This time, McDonald was featured in the now widely debunked anti-vaxxer documentary, Died Suddenly. As her collapse is shown, an ominous voiceover from an anonymous “whistleblower” says, “The dead can’t speak for themselves, so therefore, I have to speak for them.”
There’s obviously one small problem there: McDonald is very much alive, which reporter Ben Collins easily proved by going to visit her:
She #DiedSuddenly. pic.twitter.com/FRmJC0YucK
— Ben Collins (@oneunderscore__) March 31, 2023
As Collins dug further into the Died Suddenly documentary, he couldn’t help but notice that a lot of the people were still with us. Heck, one of them is heading to the NBA.
Via NBC News:
The person featured immediately after McDonald in the trailer, Keyontae Johnson, collapsed on Dec. 12, 2020, days before Covid vaccines were available or widely administered in the U.S. This month, Johnson made it to the Elite 8 of the NCAA Men’s Basketball Tournament with the rest of the Kansas State Wildcats and is a projected NBA Draft pick. (Johnson was eventually diagnosed with a heart condition unrelated to the Covid vaccine.)
While the documentary continues to be debunked, the abuse that McDonald has experienced since it became a hit with anti-vaxxers isn’t dying down. Turns out that group isn’t big on fact-checking or human decency.
“They say something mean, like, ‘You shouldn’t be alive because you got the vaccine,'” McDonald revealed. “Or they’ll say, ‘You shouldn’t be alive because you joked about Jesus.'”
(Via NBC News)