Conspiracy film ‘Died Suddenly: Final Days’ filled with falsehoods

On May 30, 2023, anti-vax conspiracy theorist Stew Peters released “Final Days,” the sequel to the pseudoscience documentary “Died Suddenly,” on Twitter. The film features a series of false claims about the COVID-19 pandemic, vaccines, and the Great Reset, all tied into an apocalyptic narrative where technological advancements are gained through deals with the devil, and that mRNA technology is a step toward transhumanism. The film claims these events will ultimately usher in the final days of the human species. 

Logically Facts has collated and checked some of the more prevalent claims. 

No, COVID viruses and mRNA vaccines aren’t bioweapons

Karen Kingston – a biotech analyst and legal advisor, according to the film – promotes the claim that mRNA vaccines are bioweapons. According to Kingston, the goal of mRNA vaccines is ultimately to end the human species and turn humans into humanoids. Kingston is a former Pfizer employee and claimed to be a whistleblower in an appearance on The Stew Peters Show. However, Lead Stories revealed that Kingston worked as a sales representative for Pfizer, primarily selling Viagra. Pfizer also told Lead Stories that Kingston was never involved in any vaccine research.

The claim that mRNA vaccines are bioweapons is unsubstantiated and has been fact-checked numerous times by Reuters, EUvsDisinfo, PolitiFact, and Health Feedback. The claim has been prevalent since the beginning of the COVID pandemic.

Similar claims are repeated later in the film. David Martin, a conspiracy YouTuber and financial analyst, claims that SARS-CoV-1 was patented and developed at the University of North Carolina (UNC). He asserts that the patent uses the phrase “infection replication defective clone of coronavirus,” which suggests the virus is a bioweapon. While an expired patent exists that includes this phrase, nothing indicates that it is code for a bioweapon, nor does a single patent prove that the SARS outbreak was created at UNC. Logically Facts has previously fact checked this, and Health Feedback has also checked David Martin’s other claims in the past. 

COVID-19 is caused by a virus, not lipid nano-particle technology

Kingston claims that while the COVID-19 pandemic did happen, it was not caused by a virus but by lipid nanoparticles released in targeted areas, including King County in Washington state, New York City, the Lombardy region in Italy, and Wuhan, China to create media hype and increase demands for a vaccine.

Lipid nanoparticles are spherical vesicles that act as carriers, which can help deliver mRNA to cells. This technology is used in the BioNTech/Pfizer and Moderna COVID-19 vaccines. Lipid nanoparticles do not cause COVID-19; they are a component of some vaccines used to create antibodies to protect against the disease.

Aerosols (fine liquid droplets in air or another gas) are one of three ways the COVID-19 virus spreads. There is no evidence that lipid nanoparticles were released as aerosols worldwide. The virus SARS-CoV-2 exists, can be tested for, and is the cause of COVID-19.

Event 201 doesn’t prove the pandemic was planned

Event 201 was a high-level pandemic exercise hosted by The Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security in partnership with the World Economic Forum and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation on October 18, 2019. Its purpose was to test the resources and decision-making skills of the public and private sectors in the event of a pandemic. A similar exercise called Clade X was held in 2018.

The film implies that Event 201 demonstrated that the COVID-19 outbreak was known beforehand, but it was merely a planning exercise, which is common across health bodies and governments.

The exercise used a hypothetical disease, modeled on SARS. Coronaviruses are particularly good at evolving, meaning they are regular contenders for pandemics, plus outbreaks of MERS and SARS had already occurred. Logically Facts and Health Feedback have also fact checked this claim.

Graphene oxide isn’t an ingredient of COVID-19 vaccines

A large part of “Final Days” is dedicated to the alleged presence of graphene oxide in COVID-19 vaccines, connecting the vaccines to nanoparticle technology. Kingston claims internal Pfizer documents show that their COVID-19 vaccine contains graphene oxide. 

The Pfizer document in question, "Structural and Biophysical Characterization of SARS-CoV-2 Spike Glycoprotein (P2 S) as a Vaccine Antigen," was obtained under the Freedom of Information Act and published on February 1, 2023, by a group of scientists and doctors calling themselves “Public Health and Medical Professionals for Transparency.”

The document does not cover the manufacturing process or the complete set of ingredients in COMINARTY, Pfizer's mRNA-based COVID-19 vaccine. A Pfizer spokesperson previously told Logically Facts, "Graphene oxide is not used in the manufacture of COMIRNATY. There is no graphene oxide used in the manufacturing process, and there is none in the raw materials and final vaccine product. Graphene oxide is used in a lab experiment to aid in the visualization of proteins via electron microscopy. In this experiment, Graphene oxide is frequently placed onto a meshed grid which supports the protein sample to be analyzed. The use of graphene oxide, as part of this analytical procedure, is completely unrelated to the manufacture of COMIRNATY."

At another point in the film, it’s claimed that all COVID-19 vaccines contain graphene. This is untrue, as all ingredients used in approved mRNA vaccines are available to the public, and graphene oxide is not a listed ingredient in a single one. The claim that graphene oxide is present in COVID-19 vaccines via lipid nanoparticles has been debunked by several fact-checkers. 

Long fibrous clots are not caused by magnetic hydrogel

The claim that vaccines cause long, fibrous blood clots was central to the first Died Suddenly film, and is reiterated in Died Suddenly II. The film now claims that such clots are caused by magnetic hydrogel, which causes the vaccine to turn into a gel when injected. However, the claim is false. Magnetic hydrogel is a specialized hydrogel containing at least one magnetic component in its composition. Even if present in vaccines – which it is not – it would not contain enough to create a “detectable magnetic field,” or create clots.

Nicholaus Klupp, Associate Professor in Forensic Medicine at the Medical University in Vienna, told Health Feedback that the clots look like post-mortem clots, commonly formed during refrigeration in the morgue. Furthermore, the U.S. National Funeral Directors Association told PolitiFact in January 2022 that embalmers had noticed an increase in blood clots in both vaccinated and unvaccinated individuals. Embalmer Monica Torres also told PolitiFact that blood clots were found in COVID 19-victims long before the vaccination program began in the U.S. Consequently, there is no evidence that vaccines are the cause of an uptick in blood clots. 

Moderna’s website called mRNA ‘software’ and an ‘operating system’ as a metaphor

Karen Kingston claims that pharmaceutical company Moderna’s website reveals that mRNA is a software program or an operating system with instructions for cells to make a protein. 

Moderna’s website did previously describe the mRNA technology as an “operating system,” however, this was a metaphor to make the workings of mRNA more easily understandable to a layperson. 

Moderna even made this clear in the quote Kingston refers to by using quotation marks and the phrase “very much like” to indicate that the metaphor shouldn’t be taken literally: “We set out to create an mRNA technology platform that functions very much like an operating system on a computer. It is designed so that it can plug and play interchangeably with different programs. In our case, the ‘program’ or ‘app’ is our mRNA drug - the unique mRNA sequence that codes for a protein.” 

The claim has previously been checked by Reuters, Health Feedback, and PolitiFact. Moderna is no longer using the metaphor on its website.

Hidden footage doesn’t prove Pfizer conducted gain-of-function research on COVID viruses

Following the claims that Moderna described mRNA vaccines as an operating system, "Final Days" brings up hidden-camera footage from Project Veritas, where an alleged Pfizer executive, Jordan Trishton Walker, talks about gain-of-function research at Pfizer. In the original footage, Walker also mentions that Pfizer is doing this type of research to create vaccines preemptively. 

The gain-of-function research narrative posits that the COVID-19 virus was developed and/or made more dangerous by pharmaceutical company Pfizer, or in Wuhan, to create a vaccine and make money. It is also related to the lab-leak conspiracy. 

However, the claim is false. Pfizer has denied the allegations, and Walker’s status as a Pfizer executive or employee is unverified. Project Veritas is known for its dishonest tactics and heavily edited “undercover” reporting. 

The Great Reset is not an attack on the world or an attempt to control everything

Towards the end of the film, Karen Kingston claims that World War 3 has begun. She rhetorically asks why every country agreed to lock down their population “as if they were invaded by a foreign enemy.” She concludes that this would only be agreed upon if we were under attack by another global power, and this is followed by a clip of António Guterres, head of the U.N., welcoming the beginning of the Great Reset. As such, the final culprit of the perceived existential threat is the conspiracy theorists' favorite villains: The Great Reset and the WEF. 

The Great Reset has been a common denominator for conspiracy theorists and right-wing conservatives since its proclamation in June 2020. It is perceived as an attempt to overthrow the nation-states and create a globalist super-state run by powerful elites. Many different claims have arisen since its inception, from the suggestion that it will end property ownership, to forcing everyone to eat bugs. 

However, the claims are false. The Great Reset initiative gives a platform to suggestions and ideas from the members of the WEF on how to revolutionize global society by redistributing wealth and restructuring society. The concepts proposed under the initiative are unenforceable and nonbinding, but for conspiracy theorists, the Great Reset and WEF have become a meta-conspiracy with antisemitic tropes.