Letters from Sing Sing: Special Preview: New episode of Tiffany Dover Is Dead* Podcast

Hey everyone, I'm Brandi Zdrasny, a senior reporter for NBC News.

Do you remember the name Tiffany Dover?

You might remember her from late 2020 when frontline workers were first getting the COVID vaccine.

She was a nurse who received her vaccine, but then she fainted and it was all captured on a local news livestream.

That video lit up the internet and a conspiracy theory was born.

Adding fuel to the fire after she fainted, she went dark.

No social media, no speaking to the press.

I mean, I tried to find her last year during the investigation for our podcast Tiffany Dover is Dead and I couldn't track her down.

Well, two years after she became a weapon in a misinformation war, Tiffany Dover is speaking out for the first time.

Her story and her words and the reason behind her silence are all in a special episode of Tiffany Dover is Dead.

Stay right here to listen to a preview, and if you want to catch up on the entire series, search Tiffany Dover is Dead wherever you're listening.

And follow now.

If Tiffany was alive, the thinking went, where was she?

For a health care worker who loved posting to social media, who wanted to advocate for the vaccine,

who was comfortable enough in the spotlight to get up in front of news cameras,

what sense did it make for her to just disappear?

Turns out Tiffany felt the same way.

I think that I should have been able to speak immediately the next day post regularly on social media.

I feel like being silent is what flanked this.

And I also feel like, you know, that would have been a perfect moment for us to speak out on, yes, I did pass out.

You know, you can pass out from receiving a vaccine, but that's okay because it can also save your life.

So it's worth it.

That clear, passionate message delivered succinctly by Tiffany didn't happen.

Instead, as Tiffany tells it, decision makers inside her hospital decided on something else,

a plan that however well-intentioned objectively made everything worse for everyone.

The morning after she fainted, Tiffany got a call from the public relations department.

She started with telling me that they were very busy, overwhelmed by the amount of attention,

and that it had traveled all the way to Croatia,

and that the hospital could not have me speak out because they would never recover from that.

If something like this was to happen again.

Tiffany said the hospital was worried about her responding.

What if she said the wrong thing? What if she fainted again?

That was the first time I really felt like shame from it because I was like, oh no, like, it was,

I felt terrible, you know, like she's telling me that the hospital can't recover from this.

I mean, I don't know, it was a lot for me to take on.

Tiffany took the day off, turned off her phone to quiet the constant notifications,

but she called hospital administrators later that day to check in.

So I get my phone out, call them to tell them I'm okay, and the first response is,

under no condition should you post on social media.

I know people will be reaching out to you.

Do not post under no circumstances. Do you understand?

And I'm like, yes, I understand.

Something needed to be done in the hospital, still barring Tiffany from speaking on her own,

decided to release a proof of life.

You may remember it, that really cringy video where about 20 hospital employees are standing

on a long staircase holding signs saying things like, we support Tiffany and no one speaks,

including Tiffany, who's standing at the foot of the stairs. It made no sense.

But you want to know what was actually happening?

Tiffany and her coworkers didn't know the hospital was making a video at all.

They thought it was a photo.

I'm told that there's a great idea.

So we're lined up, I'm told we're going to take this photo,

and this will show everyone that I'm alive.

So as you know, when you go to take a photo, you stand there, you smile,

you maybe shift a little, and that's it. But this was not a photo.

As I realized when it was posted, it was a video, and nobody was aware.

As you can tell from all of us just standing there in these strange positions,

you know, it looks awkward. We're not smiling, waving.

Normally you'd be like, hey, you know, kind of, I'm okay.

Smile. No, we're standing for a photo. So it's awkward.

It was strange on its own. But then,

Truthers dissected every frame and concluded that no way was this person

the Tiffany Dover they had seen pass out. This new Tiffany?

This is not the woman that died, Tiffany Dover. This is a phony, which-

Her eyes were duller, they said.

The real Tiffany's eyes, which are blue, by the way,

have a fleshy part that points the curls down through the words her nose.

Her hair was parted on the wrong side.

Tiffany's got some swoop-de-dupe action. You see this?

She got the swoop-de-dupe going up here.

They said she looked heavier.

I have this woman that is not only about 25 pounds heavier than Tiffany is,

but her hair is different.

And then also the vest.

Yes. So typically I would be required to wear a white coat to work,

but in all of the chaos, I forgot my coat. I don't know where it was.

So I put into this someone's white vest and it's like, oh, look,

she looks much thinner here than she did there.

Well, I have a vest. That's not mine. And then it was my hair.

You know, I part my hair, I think it was parted to the left

and the first one, and then it was down the middle.

And that is because I called my friend, hey, we can fix my hair for this.

I'm about to go down. She curls it. I go down, you know.

I want to say that yesterday when I saw you at dinner,

you had a part in the center, I think.

And today it's on the side.

I am not a consistent hair porter.

When I go to my hairstylist and she asks, where do you part?

I do not have a part. It's whatever I'm feeling that day.

That proof of life video did not make things better, I would say.

Is that correct?

I would say it made it worse.

It made people suspicious because if I'm okay,

why am I not just talking? Why are we standing there?

You just heard a preview of a special episode of Tiffany Dover is Dead.

One thing to mention, I did reach out to both the hospital and their parent company

to see if they had any response to Tiffany's story.

And I got one reply, we have no new information.

To listen to this episode or the full podcast,

you can go to the link in the description of this clip

or search Tiffany Dover is Dead wherever you're listening.

Machine-generated transcript that may contain inaccuracies.