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Culture War Roundup for the week of November 28, 2022

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COVID-19 vaccine conspiracy theories are shaking things up again, this time regarding the blood supply. An alternate blood donation infrastructure is growing. (If you don’t want to read the vaccine-skeptical take from TGP, here’s the Vice article on SafeBlood Donation they were reporting on.)

This comes after the release of the Suddenly Died documentary blaming the vaccine for the surge in heart attacks, including really odd blood clots.

I have given blood for twenty years and do not plan to stop. I don’t give through the Red Cross but rather through Vitalent, formerly United Blood Services. I am not vaccinated for COVID-19, and will continue to vehemently, vociferously, and assiduously avoid those injections, on both medical and religious grounds (though my reasoning is different than one might expect). I don’t plan to switch my donations to SafeBlood unless they can assure me it won’t be wasted, by my definitions of wasted.

All of this may seem to be a fascinating new front in the Culture War, but it’s actually an attempt to recapture territory: the denial of organ transplants to COVID-vaccine refusers.

Regular PSA: Do not trust Google search to be unbiased.

Searching "Died Suddenly" on Google gives me a news widget and 9 results. Of the 9 results, 6 are negative articles about the documentary, one is a YouTube video defending the doc (that got slipped in by mistake due to its negative sounding title), and the other 2 are IMDB and RottenTomatoes. The adjectives used in the negative article headlines are:

debunked x3

conspiracy

anti-vax x3

false x2

unfounded

bogus

Doesn't really seem like there's much room for debate in there. Yandex in contrast gives 6 links to the actual film itself including a YouTube link that apparently isn't allowed to show up on Google's first page. The Yandex results include one apparently even-handed in depth review, and another mildly negative review. Both have much more content than the "four legs good, two legs bad" Google articles.

The documentary is my #1 result if I search [died suddenly] on Google. The IMDB page is in the results. Bing also has the documentary as #1, though it does not have the IMDB page. Most of the rest is negative articles in both cases. Google also includes an irrelevant scholarly article about people dying when using the "Liquid-Protein-Modified-Fast-Diet.