5 January 2019: The Queen Will Die

05/01/2019

An online rumor claimed that the Queen Elizabeth II of England could die in January 5th.

This sparked an outrage and shocked reaction from Royal fans and others. The Buckingham Palace refused to comment on the shocking state, but on January 5th, the Queen was seen attending church in Sandringham, which dismissed any speculations of her death.

The rumor was said to start on online message board Reddit by user Beefy_Cabbage on 27 December. The original message which gained more than 50,000 upvotes and thousands of comments has been removed not long after being posted.

Other Reddit users said that the post was either a "creepy prediction" for the Queen's death, or a mistake which has sparked a M15 response.

Queen Elizabeth II leaves after attending church in Sandringham using a Bentley Arnage-based State Limousine
Queen Elizabeth II leaves after attending church in Sandringham using a Bentley Arnage-based State Limousine

User TheStakesAreHigh said the that odds of Queen Elizabeth II dying on January 5 are pretty low, adding:

"Elizabeth II is currently 92 years old. Via this website , the odds for a 92-year-old woman to die within the next year of her life is 16.06% (which will be rounded up to 16.1% for simplification). Dividing this probability evenly among all 365 days of the year (which is not how it works, but it's all that we have to go off of), each day of her 92nd year, the Queen has about a 0.04411% chance of dying on any given day."

"Now, in order to fulfill beefy_cabbage 's legendary prediction, the Queen would need to NOT die before January 5th, and then die on that day. There are 9 days before the 5th (27th-4th), so the probability ends up being."

"(100%-0.04411%) * 0.04411% (the first term representing the nine days she would survive and the second term representing the day she would die)."

"By this expression, the Queen has a 0.04393% chance of dying on January 5th, 2019. This is about a 1 in 2276 chance. So it's pretty unlikely (but definitely still within the realm of possibility!) that she'll die then. God Save the Queen."

Queen Elizabeth II has been on an active role in the Royal Family.

Born in London on April 21st, 1926, she is the head of the Commonwealth and queen regnant of seven independent Commonwealth countries: the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, Pakistan, and Ceylon.

She is the first British monarch to reach a Sapphire Jubilee, the longest-lived and longest-reigning British monarch in British history, and also the world's longest-reigning queen regnant and female head of state.

While there have been no official reports about the Queen's health, the energetic monarch continues with agenda by attending numerous royal events. In fact in 2018, she had more engagement that in 2017, with her workload increased by about 25 percent.

Not much is known about the Queen's personal feelings since she rarely give interviews. As a constitutional monarch, she also has not expressed her own political opinions in public.

As a powerful and famous individual, the Queen is not safe from rumors and jokes. But hoaxes and false prediction which led to memes, could really feed real anxieties to the real world.