On Monday, Kirstie Alley, legend of both the small and the big screen, passed away unexpectedly. She was 71. The cause of death was later revealed to be colon cancer. But it didn’t take long for tinfoil hat conspiracy theorists to offer an alternative (read: baseless and silly) explanation: that she was somehow murdered because she happened to be anti-vax.
As per Vice, mere minutes after news of Alley’s death was announced, QAnon adherents — a famously sensible bunch — began flooding message boards with tall tales of mysterious figures poisoning the Cheers and Look Who’s Talking alum as part of a global plot to silence critics of COVID-19 vaccines.
The conspiracies have already started after Kirstie Alleys death. pic.twitter.com/QDSNZrohfN
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(@2022_Karma) December 6, 2022
“I wholly believe the [deep state] has a way of dosing people with poisons that create aggressive cancers,” one person wrote. Another went further, writing, “She either just drew the short straw or she was poisoned by the Deep State for being a public Patriot.”
There was another breed of QAnon wackiness. Some believe that sudden deaths, such as Alley’s, mean that they were given a COVID vaccine. Alas, Alley reportedly never got a single jab. That forced conspiracists to get creative. Some speculated that, because Alley had recently joined the cast of The Masked Singer, she had been forced to get vaxxed. Others offered another out-there theory: that she had to get jabbed to receive treatment for her colon cancer. Others still wondered if it had anything to do with her longheld belief in Scientology.
And of course, there was some fun with numbers, with some pointing out that Alley was 71, and if you switch those two numbers around, you get 17 — an important number amongst the QAnon crowd.
For everyone else, you can honor the passing of Alley by digging into her vast CV, which contains more than a terrific run on one of the best sitcoms to ever air.
(Via Vice)