Fact Check: COVID-19 Vaccine Did NOT Cause Death Of ‘Fully Vaccinated’ Fox Contributor Kelly Powers — Cancer Diagnosis In Mid-2020
Was Fox News contributor Dr. Kelly Powers’ death from cancer due to the COVID-19 vaccine? No, that’s not true: An article calling her “fully vaccinated” implies that she passed away from the COVID vaccine. Powers was diagnosed with glioblastoma, an aggressive brain cancer, in July 2020, according to an obituary; the COVID vaccine was not available until 2021. The article does not give any proof that Powers’ death was caused by the COVID vaccine.
The claim appeared in an article published by The People’s Voice on December 4, 2024, titled “Fully Vaccinated Fox News Doctor Kelly Powers, Who Survived On-Air Heart Attack, Dies From Turbo Cancer” (archived here). It began:
Fully vaccinated Fox News contributor and doctor Kelly Powers died Sunday following a series of health problems including heart failure and a battle with brain cancer.
Here is what the post looked like on the website at the time of writing:
(Source: The People’s Voice website screenshot taken on Wed Dec 4 18:24:39 2024 UTC)
The article calls Powers “fully vaccinated” in the headline and in the opening of the article but does not mention or provide any evidence that the COVID vaccine was her cause of death.
It describes her health issues:
Dr. Powers suffered a series of health complications in 2020, prompting her initial cancer diagnosis. Although her illness went into remission, it returned with a vengeance in 2024 before she passed away this week.
Dr. Powers first showed signs of trouble with shortness of breath and chest pain, which quickly escalated into heart failure–shockingly, all while she was live on a segment for Fox Business.
‘It’s crazy. I went into heart failure while doing a report on Fox Business — live — on heart health and talking about the subtle signs that women often miss. You can’t make this up,’ she told Preferred Health Magazine in an interview after she was first diagnosed for her ailments.
The article notes her fatal diagnosis:
Later on, Dr. Powers learned she had glioblastoma, an aggressive brain cancer.
According to a New York Times obituary (archived here) published on December 4, 2024, Powers was diagnosed with cancer in summer 2020, before COVID vaccines became available:
In July 2020, she had a seizure and was diagnosed with glioblastoma, an aggressive brain cancer. Dr. Powers had three brain surgeries and received chemotherapy, radiation and immunotherapy treatment, as her family described on a GoFundMe page, but the cancer returned and another mass was found in her brain earlier this year.
Powers wrote about her brain tumor on her Instagram account (archived here) on July 11, 2020. Here is a screenshot of her post:
(Source: Instagram screenshot taken on Wed Dec 4 20:12:33 2024 UTC)
The first COVID vaccines were given on December 14, 2020, as the New York Times reported (archived here).
The People’s Voice
The People’s Voice is among the most prolific online publishers of fake news. Articles on the site often link to and extensively quote stories from other sites to give an appearance of legitimacy but the main claim in the headline and/or the first paragraph of each article is almost never supported by the sources that are offered. The site routinely makes up quotes from people or misrepresents scientific study results.
It originally started as YourNewsWire in 2014 and rebranded as NewsPunch in 2017. In 2023 it rebranded itself again to The People’s Voice. The People’s Voice/NewsPunch/YourNewsWire has published numerous fake news articles in the past, so anything that appears on the site should be taken with a large grain of salt. Its Facebook page, “The People’s Voice”, lost its verification checkmark, according to a 2018 report from Media Matters For America.
Other Lead Stories fact checks about COVID-19 can be found here.
