Truthers: Tiffany Dover Is Dead*

Needle In

<p>The story of Tiffany Dover begins, ironically, in a moment of hope. The COVID vaccine is finally arriving in communities across America. Tiffany, the head nurse in her hospital’s COVID unit, proudly gets the shot, and then faints while taking questions about it. As she falls into the arms of the doctors standing behind her, the local news cameras turn away. By the time she returns to the podium 20 minutes later, a new conspiracy theory has been hatched: Tiffany Dover had died and been replaced by a body double. Brandy Zadrozny sets out to trace how the theory started, and to find the people who are keeping it going—those who truly believe that vaccines kill, and those who are just addicted to the game.</p>

Welcome to one of the internet’s weirdest obsessions. Back in December of 2020, a nurse named Tiffany Dover fainted on camera while she was talking to reporters after getting her first COVID shot. She got right back up and gave another interview, but it was too late. A conspiracy theory was already racing around the world: Dover had died. She’d been replaced by a body double. And an ever-expanding list of conspirators was in on the cover-up, including the drug companies, the hospital, the media, and maybe even the Pope. Tiffany Dover is alive and well, but she’s stayed silent through it all. And now her story has been hijacked by total strangers trying to make people doubt the safety of the COVID vaccine. In this first season of Truthers, a podcast project about misinformation and conspiracy theories, NBC News reporter Brandy Zadrozny sets out to show what’s true and what isn’t—and how one person’s life became a weapon in a global information war.