‘Meanwhile in Ohio’ ‘Death Plume’ Image

On February 13 2023, a Facebook account shared the following image, purportedly a photograph of a huge, dark plume of smoke near the site of a train derailment in Ohio: An attached status update referenced unrelated news about “unidentified objects” in the skies over North America after a Chinese spy balloon was shot down: Google Trends data for the seven-day period ending February 14 2023 evidenced widespread searching for terms related to both stories. A search for “Ohio plume” indicated the terms “Ohio death plume,” “plume of death,” “Ohio river,”...