My take on "Died Suddenly"

A viable hypothesis mired in conspiracy, high production, and lack of proper vetting of the material.

Readers likely have seen/heard several people provide some perspectives on the new documentary Died Suddenly produced by Stew Peters.

From what I can tell the general response has been rather good to mixed.

I personally decided not to weigh in on this documentary given my criticisms of the snake venom peptide documentary that came out a few months prior.

The biggest problem with this documentary [Watch the Water] is that many of Dr. Ardis’ claims were taken at face value. No pushback was provided, and rather than look for evidence to the contrary the claims that COVID was being caused by snake venom, or that Remdesivir was snake venom, was accepted as fact.

Many people may not remember the fallout after the release of the first documentary, but many criticisms came out, and from many prominent individuals including those on the COVID Skeptic side of the discourse.

So I suppose my biases prevented me from taking a gander at the documentary.

But I did decide to take a look last night.

Although I think the documentary was well-crafted, and that there are things worth investigating as it relates to the blood clots and reports from coroners, I also can’t overlook the fact that much of the documentary leans too heavily into the conspiratorial, and unfortunately there are some issues with how information is presented and with some of the videos used.

For instance, the documentary starts off with a mention of the blood clots possibly being tied to the vaccines, but then it leads into a montage of other various conspiracies.

This makes the interpretation of this opening montage confusing. Bret and Heather discussed this on a recent podcast and how there’s some strangeness in the presentation of this montage (timestamped to relevant point):

I will say, however, that in another life Calamari Clot would make for a good punk band name.

Now, as to the way the documentary is presented the addition of the conspiracies alters the optics and the perception of the film irrespective of what it is alluding to.

This becomes a problem when the next portion of the film focuses solely on the conspiracy of depopulation rather than the blood clots itself, especially given that the documentary introduces Chad Whisnat, a funeral director alleging that he has seen these blood clots, and yet his first remarks are about depopulation being associated with vaccines rather than, you know, the blood clots.

The general issue with this presentation is that it has frontloaded all of the conspiratorial stuff without getting to the meat of the argument. In a documentary about people “dying suddenly” why not start with the premise and save some of the more conspiratorial information until the end. Start with the what, then lead into the why.

And so right off the bat the association between these otherwise worrying findings of blood clots have been tainted by the presentation of the documentary.

Which leads into other criticisms about the documentary, most notably the veracity of the information provided.

From my limited viewing I believe A Midwestern Doctor’s post on this is quite informative.

What is Causing the Blood Clots from "Died Suddenly?"

He notes the visual persuasion in the story, even boiling the actual sections on blood clots down to a 15 minute video which would otherwise seem extremely alarming.

The issue is that blood clots and the presentation of white fibers invoke immediate associations and comparisons. The detailing of cellular processes are boring because one can’t imagine on their own how these processes are occurring. You can’t quite visualize the enzymes and the substrates coming together to coordinate a reaction, and we certainly can’t easily imagine how a virus replicates and collects back into the proper structures to be released from infected cells.

However, point to clogged arteries and show images of clogged pipes (as AMD notes in his article) and you can immediately create the image in a person’s mind tying the two. It’s rather damning that emotions can supersede the content and facts presented in a documentary.

But one thing that AMD mentions raises questions to the veracity of some of the things being presented in the documentary. Of note, AMD comments that the video used at the end of the documentary actually came out prior to the vaccines:

Unfortunately, as alluded to above, there is one huge issue with this segment. The live clot at the end has nothing to do with the COVID-19 vaccinations (it came from a surgery posted on youtube a year before the vaccines entered the market). I suspect this arose because someone re-uploaded that clip and labeled it as being from the vaccines (either as a prank or as clickbait) and then it was re-shared until the Died Suddenly team got it and added it in since it supported their narrative. This illustrates why it is so important to have strict editorial controls on any production, especially one that is difficult to revise after the fact and will be viewed by large numbers of people. I debated clipping that ending part off (since it makes this a much worse clip to share), but did not as I felt it is important for our community to be transparent and open about any inaccuracies on our end.

This is a serious issue, because as soon as this point is made I then have to question the veracity of all of the videos included. None of them indicate when the events of these people passing out occurred, but the presentation is meant to make it appear as if this is due purely to the vaccines rather than videos taken from timepoints prior to the vaccine rollout.

This lack of vetting and transparency calls into question some of the content in the film. Strangely, I also had this issue with how Watch the Waters was presented, relying on these little bits of video to add to the histrionics rather than the factual basis of the arguments presented.

The fact that there appears to be this consistency between the two documentaries should raise some questions to the actual vetting process being done by Stew and his production crew, to be frank.

After being made aware of this issue, I myself cannot look at the other parts of the video without questioning whether the videos are real or taken out of context.

But that also begs the question as to whether there are barriers put into place to make sure proper vetting has occurred.

Again, the fact that Dr. Ardis’ claims of snake venom peptides were never vetted and questioned raised serious concerns about the Watch the Water documentary, and once again it is happening here with Died Suddenly as well.

And to that point, AMD makes a rather diplomatic comment about mistakes and correcting the ones from Died Suddenly:

The producers of Died Suddenly have my genuine sympathy for these oversights , as I recognize from writing here on complex subjects how easy it is despite my best efforts to make factual errors and as much as I hate to say this “spread misinformation” (this is why I and colleagues periodically volunteer to vet medical information being compiled to challenge this vaccination program).

At the same time however, I also believe once these mistakes are recognized, they need to be addressed. Since I can edit my own written posts after publication, I recognize it is much easier for someone like me to do that than a video publisher, but I nonetheless believe it must also be seriously considered for a documentary that had a limited release to a video-sharing platform.

I noted that the immediate response to Watch the Waters was met with doubling-down approach and a few people drawing hard lines as to who were enemies and who were allies.

With that being said, I wanted to see if there was at least some evidence of correction or additional context made in regard to the snake venom peptide debacle.

Apparently an interview was released at the end of October between Dr. Jane Ruby and Dr. Ardis with the following title:

So was Dr. Ardis wrong in his snake venom claims?

No, in fact the interview actually suggests that COVID is not caused by snake venom peptides, but is made to induce your own body to produce these toxic peptides.

So this video wasn’t intended to argue that Dr. Ardis was wrong, and instead just made slight variations in his assumption which still is highly dubious, given the fact that many of Dr. Ardis’ claims rely far too heavily on the transitive property and really not much else.

Actually, I will state that I do have some questions about Dr. Ardis’ assessment of the literature, but that would take a whole separate post and given that he uses [albeit improperly] the same studies from a few months prior in this recent interview then it’s not worth rehashing once again.

It does, however, raise questions as to how one can accept the claims made by Dr. Ardis and place them into the context of the blood clots stated in the Died Suddenly documentary. These two ideas can’t work independently and would have to have some cohesive tie-in in order for both documentaries to be touted as being correct.

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In any case, the main point I’m making here is that if we are to assume the issues and controversies with Died Suddenly would be properly addressed sometime in the future, then we may be left rather wanting.

The recent interview just doubles down even further on Dr. Ardis’ claims, and once again provides no necessary pushback, with an interview driven solely by Ardis.

So now we are dealing with a claim of blood clot formation due to the vaccines, which requires extensive investigation and would prove rather damning if true, now being associated with other unnecessary conspiracies and presented with some rather questionable material.

Instead, the documentary should have focused on the aspects of the blood clots and tied them more closely with some of the processes that may lead to their formation.

Note that the documentary states that these blood clots exist, that cancer is on the rise as well as miscarriages, but never explains the mechanisms by which these processes may occur.

AMD dedicates a large portion of his article to the possible mechanisms by which these blood clots may arise. I haven’t looked too deeply into this topic myself so I tend to take these ideas with a grain of salt, but at least AMD provides some information to help substantiate his claims, which is far more can be said when compared to the documentary. We need far more than just, “well, didn’t you see those clots?! Clearly they’re from the vaccines!”

Why is it that this documentary provides these claims and yet doesn’t back them up with evidence in the literature and science?

Such claims would be made far better when supported by evidence, but again I as a viewer am left wanting and is, once again, one of the serious issues with Watch the Water revisited in Died Suddenly.

We need far more investigations into the adverse reactions from these vaccines, but it doesn’t do us well to fall for tactics of persuasion rather than relying on substantive arguments to make our claims.

Optics matter, and these documentaries may end up proving rather harmful in the overall discourse if not properly addressed and corrected.

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