Just found out on my newsreader that the latest CT that's gathering steam is that Mitch McConnell is already dead. While I would not be surprised to find out he's in the express checkout lane, I find it a little far fetched to think he had assumed room temperature and somebody would want to keep that a secret. For what purpose? Maybe he's comatose. Maybe he's brain dead and they haven't pulled the plug. But if he was truly dead, i.e. all bodily functions have ceased, I think they would have made that public.

JFK had died before his official time of death of 1:00 CST but the announcement was withheld for another half hour for security purposes because they wanted to get LBJ to AF1 and have him sworn in. That's understandable. Biden passed away sometime during his term of office but as long as they had the autopen functioning, there was nor reason to make that announcement. Besides, if they admitted that, Kamala would have become POTUS and nobody wanted that. Somebody made the reasonable choice that it was better to have a corpse propped up at the Resolute desk than a lush.

I wonder if a study has ever been done on the likelihood of the development of conspiracy theories after any given occurrence and the factors involved that would impact such a process.

For instance when the Watergate burglars were caught it was not a big deal, until one of them told the judge he worked for the CIA. Was this the beginning of a conspiracy theory that proved valid over time?

Is the impact of the event related to the development of suspicion that the official findings of the related investigation and conclusion are wrong or even a cover up? This happened after the JFK, RFK and MLK assassinations, but also after the 9/11 attacks. Presumably there will be overlapping aspects in the JFK murder and the attack on Kirk that led to surfacing of conspiracy theories in the latter case.