THE HANK AARON PROBLEM

           On January 5, 2021, Hank Aaron got his COVID shot at the Morehead School of Medicine, alongside a group of other respected black elders in the Atlanta community.  The purpose of this public event was to encourage reluctant black people to get vaccinated.

 

          “I don’t have any qualms about it at all, you know,” said Aaron.  “I feel quite proud of myself for doing something like this.  It’s just a small thing that can help zillions of people in this country.”

 

          On January 22, Aaron died in his sleep.  He was 86 years old and in decent health, though it was later reported that he had “prostate issues and a history of hypertension.”  (Like pretty much every 86-year-old guy in the world.)

 

          What followed was a textbook case of how the media wing of the emerging biomedical state handles a potentially embarrassing story, or one that may cause the public to question the fundamental “truths” of the COVID narrative.

 

          The first option for the media, as we have seen repeatedly, is to ignore the story entirely.  This is what is done with all reports of street protests against lockdowns, mask and vax mandates, and other authoritarian measures.  These protests occur every week in France, Australia, Italy, Ireland, the UK, Germany, and other countries where police state rule is further along (and more brutal), than in the U.S.  They sometimes bring out tens of thousands of people demanding freedom from the totalitarian rules being enforced upon them.  You will never see reports of these demonstrations in your newspaper, or film of them on the legacy networks, CNN, MSNBC, or other outlets.  (You rarely see them on Fox News either.)

 

          A second example of the blackout treatment is the subject of vaccination injuries or deaths.  The tiresome refrain on how “safe and effective” the vaccines are is something we see every day, but you will never see reports of people killed, hospitalized, or crippled by them.  Yet the VAERS (Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System) website, which is run by the CDC and the FDA, has received reports of 14,798 deaths and 134,813 hospitalizations attributed to COVID vaccines (as of September 24, 2021).  The reports are generally not verified by the CDC, but there’s no reason to think they are bogus either.  In addition, a recent study by the CDC itself concluded that such events are under-reported by a factor of 8.3.  Yet neither VAERS nor the frightening number of vaccine injuries is ever mentioned in government-friendly media.

 

          But the Hank Aaron story was different.  Because of his fame, and the fact he had taken the shot publicly in order to dispel fear of the vaccines among black people, his death was a story that could not be completely ignored.  An otherwise healthy 86-year-old man gets the shot and dies 17 days later for no apparent reason?  Hank Aaron was perhaps the most famous person in the city of Atlanta, and he was a beloved figure in the world of baseball generally.  Questions about his death arose immediately.

 

          Four days after his death, the media response was in place.  Thereafter, the game plan was uniformly followed by broadcasters, journalists, on-line publications and “fact-checkers.”

          1) An explanation for Aaron’s death was presented by (unnamed) experts. 

          2) From the moment it was offered, the explanation was treated as definitive, and no further questions would be allowed.  Under no circumstances was further inquiry legitimized, or even mentioned.

          3) The safety and effectiveness of COVID vaccines was touted in articles about Aaron’s death, strongly implying that any questioning of the official explanation was fundamentally illegitimate, and based in disinformation or conspiracy theories.

 

          Yahoo’s January 26 report is representative of the lot:

          “Major League Baseball legend and Atlanta entrepreneur Hank Aaron’s cause of death has been revealed.

          “The 86-year-old Hall-of-Famer and longtime Atlanta Braves right fielder died of natural causes, according to an investigator in the Fulton County Medical Examiner’s Office.”

 

          The explanation from TV stations, newspapers and other outlets ALL cited the same statement from the Medical Examiner’s Office, often in exactly the same words.  Hank died of “natural causes,” as if this were an explanation, and that was to be the end of it.  People Magazine said it was “natural causes.”  Forbes said it was “natural causes.”  WKRG in Atlanta said it was “natural causes.”

 

          Factcheck.org also accepted the Medical Examiner’s “natural causes” as gospel, but, presumably in an attempt to flesh out its report, went back to Morehead, and wrote: “The Morehead School of Medicine, which is affiliated with the Atlanta clinic where Aaron was immunized, also said the vaccine was not a factor in his death.”  Note two things here.  First, schools can’t talk; people do.  This is another unnamed source.  Second, how would Morehead know Aaron’s cause of death?  There is no report, and no evidence, that they examined his body.

 

          Factcheck.org also dug up another sciency person (named this time), to corroborate the narrative.  Karen Sullivan of the Medical Examiner’s office is quoted as saying: “There was no information suggestive of an allergic or anaphylactic reaction to any substance which might be attributable to recent vaccine distribution.”  Not exactly the same as saying “the vax didn’t kill him,” is it?

 

          A few days later, Forbes Magazine checked in to wrap it all up.  Citing some of those “medical experts” at Morehead who never seem to have names, a journo named Marshall Shepherd wrote, “His passing was not related to the vaccine, nor did he experience any side effects from the immunization.”  Mr. Shepherd also dug out an old statement from the CDC to the effect that anaphylactic reactions to COVID vaccines are extremely rare, as if this had some relevance to Aaron’s death.

 

          And that was that.  I spent some time looking for a news story or broadcast item where somebody, anybody, sought to dig a half inch deeper into the story, and I found nothing.  Nobody questioned “natural causes” as a cause of death.  Did he die of cancer?  Did he have a heart attack?  A stroke?  Was he eaten by a frickin’ bear???  Somehow that follow-up question never got asked.  Also, nobody demanded that a NAMED public official come forward and report on the nature of the investigation into Hank Aaron’s death, and what the findings were.  After less than a week, the story was shoved down the memory hole.  These questions can now only be asked by us conspiracy freak, anti-vaxxer, transphobe, white supremacist MAGA-hatters in the darker corners of the internet.

 

          It is sad that Hank Aaron’s death, and the cause of it, is not important enough to justify breaking the ironclad censorship protocols protecting the COVID narrative.  Even in Atlanta, where he was an icon and a hero, the truth was so feared that we are not permitted to seek it out.

 

          Hank deserved better than this.

 

          When Aaron was pursuing Babe Ruth’s record for the most homers in major league history, he received dozens of letters and cards every day, for months, and while most of them were fan mail, a lot of them were laced with racial hatred for daring to challenge the home-run record of a white man.  Death threats were common.  For a time, he traveled separately from the team, protected by armed security.

 

          Aaron saved the ugliest mail.  They were in boxes in his attic, and he would occasionally bring out some of the nasty stuff to show a journalist he trusted, or a historian researching him.  Reportedly, he was not a bitter man, but he had no illusions either.  He came from nothing, he made himself the greatest power hitter in baseball history, and he didn’t let anybody stop him.  The haters faded away, but Hank never did.  His integrity and his dignity eventually triumphed.  For years, I have kept a list of the ten greatest living Americans, and up until January 22, Hank was always on there.

 

          Hank deserved better.

 

          The haters are different now.  Now they reside in government agencies and newspaper offices and TV stations, and the life and times of a great man like Hank Aaron means nothing to them.  He too must be used by them to tell “the narrative,” the COVID story that we all must accept, we all must believe, we all must embrace.

 

          The great, sad irony here is that, on January 4, Hank Aaron was trying to serve those people, the ones who demand we all believe the story and we all get vaccinated.  He believed in the program, and he was trying to help other black men and women by showing them the vaccine was safe, or at least worth the risk.  And I am not implying he was wrong to do that.  What is wrong is that, when he died, Hank Aaron was no longer useful to them, so any honest inquiry into his death had to be “managed.”

 

          And so the truth became secondary.  In fact, it was less than secondary.   For the Morehead School of Medicine and the Fulton County Medical Examiner’s Office and Forbes and WKRG and Yahoo and People Magazine and all the other journalists in Atlanta and around the nation, the truth didn’t matter at all compared to the importance of protecting the COVID story.   I view them much the same way I view those racists who wrote the letters to Aaron in 1974.  For both groups, Hank was not a man of any substance, and not a man worthy of their respect.  He was just a threat to what they believed in.  For both the crackers and the COVID establishment, Hank was just another inconvenient nigger.

 

Copyright2021MichaelKubacki