Did a vaccinated Delta pilot die mid-flight? Is anything in a viral COVID-19-related rap video to be believed? Is Tesco letting 4,300 staff members go in favor of self-checkout machines? Join us as we fact-check three of the most popular rumors of the week!

Did a vaccinated Delta pilot die mid-flight? False!

Tons of social media posts have recently been circulating claiming that a Delta flight needed to conduct an emergency landing after a recently COVID-19-vaccinated pilot died mid-flight.

The rumor started after Dr. Jane Ruby made the claims during an appearance on the conservative podcast The Stew Peters Show. Dr. Ruby has previously made other outlandish COVID-19-related claims such as the vaccines are magnetic and that they cause blood anomalies.

Regarding the alleged Delta pilot incident, Dr. Ruby stated that a recently vaccinated pilot based out of Los Angeles International Airport died suddenly during a flight and the plane needed to make an emergency landing.

She didn’t provide any concrete information regarding the incident, however — not even something as simple as the pilot’s name. This is of course no surprise though because the story is completely fabricated. In a short statement addressing the rumor, Delta clarified that no such event happened:

“Delta is aware of reports suggesting one of the airline’s pilots passed away from vaccine complications while operating a flight, resulting in an emergency landing. All of these allegations are false.”

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A viral COVID-19-related rap video is spreading misinformation! And lots of it!

A recent COVID-19-related rap video, set to the tune of Eminem’s Lose Yourself, has been spreading like crazy across social media. The video, which has currently been viewed over 50 thousand times, is full of tons of COVID-19 misinformation. So much so in fact, that we can’t cover everything in this post. However, we will clear up some of the worst offenders.

1. Is ivermectin an effective drug for treating COVID-19? No. Mostly false. It was only a few weeks ago that we busted this one after Joe Rogan endorsed the drug for its efficacy as a treatment for COVID-19.

2. Is COVID-19 only as deadly as the flu? Not at all. It has been proven that COVID-19 is much more contagious and has a significantly higher mortality rate than the flu.

3. Are children more likely to die from the vaccine than the virus? No. This one is completely bogus, too. There is no evidence that supports this claim.

Please do not treat this video as a credible source of information. Although the content is presented entertainingly, the rumors and misinformation that it is spreading are genuinely harmful.

Is Tesco letting 4,300 staff members go in favor of self-checkout machines? Nope!

This is one of those rumors that can spread across social media like wildfire with nobody bothering to check if it’s true before retweeting or sharing it. And that’s exactly what’s happened.

The original Tweet was posted back in April, but it wasn’t until the same misinformation — copy and pasted, typos and all — was more recently posted to Facebook that this rumor took off. The Facebook copycat post has since amassed 24,000 shares, but plenty of other people have posted about it and garnered a large number of shares and retweets, too.

Tesco did cut 4,500 jobs back in August of 2019, but this alleged cull of over 4,300 jobs, with Tesco confirming that it’s not true, is most certainly just a rumor.

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