Alabama nurse who fueled anti-vax conspiracy theories breaks silence
An Alabama nurse who became Exhibit A of the anti-vaxxer movement after she collapsed shortly after receiving the COVID-19 vaccine addressed the skeptics after more than three years of silence.
“My message is simple: it’s that I’m alive, I’m well. That’s it. I hope they believe it,” Tiffany Dover, a north Alabama resident and former nurse manager at a Tennessee hospital, told NBC News in an interview that aired Monday.
Dover, who is also the subject of the NBC News podcast “Truthers: Tiffany Dover is Dead*,” fueled anti-vaxxer conspiracy theories when she passed out while addressing the media after being vaccinated against COVID-19 in December 2020.
She said she has episodes where she passes out, including when receiving vaccines.
Despite regaining her composure after her collapse and answering questions from the media assembled at CHI Memorial Hospital in Chattanooga, conspiracy theorists online claimed that Dover actually died from the vaccine.
“People thought that I was dead, people thought that I was an actress paid to do this, that I was paid off by Big Pharma,” Dover told NBC News. “It was completely overwhelming, to be honest.”
So-called “Tiffany Truthers” showed up to her house in Higdon, Dover said. Members of her family received death threats over the incident.
The conspiracy theories ran rampant online.
Dover wanted to rebut the skeptics, but she claimed CHI Memorial prevented her from doing so.
“It would be ‘irrecoverable damage’ is what I was told if I was to speak out and had another episode,” she said the hospital told her at the time.
Instead, CHI Memorial created a video that showed Dover, but the conspiracy theories persisted.
Dover said she believed her silence helped fuel the conspiracy theories.
“It’s hard to think that you are being used to deter somebody from getting the vaccine, and that was hard for me to cope with,” she said.
Dover blamed her silence for fanning the flames.
“I wish that we would have used [the collapse] as a platform to speak out on the fact that people do pass out after getting shots, vaccines. But that is not a reason to not proceed with getting them,” she said.
CHI Memorial denied to NBC News that it silenced Dover.
Dover left CHI Memorial last year and her nursing career is currently on hold as she focuses on reclaiming her life.
She said she can’t control what the conspiracy theorists think about her.
“At this point, I’ve done what I needed to do. I’ve put it out there that I’m alive,” she said. “They have to choose whether they believe that or not. And that’s all I can do is put out the truth.”