She became an anti-vaccine icon, and vanished. She’s finally ready to talk about it.

Tiffany Dover is alive. Sitting across from Tiffany at her kitchen table, this is obvious. She breathes in and out. She gestures with her hands. She laughs generously. Dimples carve into both cheeks when she smiles, which she does a lot. Her eyes are wide and bright and terribly blue.

“I didn’t die that day,” Tiffany tells me. “But the life I knew did.”

I’d been following Tiffany since that day, Dec. 17, 2020. Like thousands of others, I first saw her on a livestream during the national rollout of Covid vaccines to front-line workers, where Tiffany became one of the first people in the U.S. to get a shot. I was also watching when she fainted immediately after, launching a wave of misinformation and conspiracy theories that would eventually unravel her life.