At least religious people have an excuse because their belief comes from a place of suffering, no one who thinks these sci-fi fantasy concepts are real is suffering, these beliefs come from a place of extreme comfort, nobody who believes in aliens is from the global south, how many times do liars need to stand in front of governments and say “aliens are real” for there to be some kind of explicit denouncement from atheists for these absolutely non-atheistic beliefs that get a pass because they are sci-fi. PURGE THE NERDS!
For sure. I'd have to look up the specific cases though. The Dyatlov Pass incident is the only one I can remember off the top of my head.
Edit: Also the Salyut-7 cosmonauts' "angels".
If they had interest, then there's the Second World right there, which at least gets rid of this tired trope that only Westerners think of UFOs. I'd at least like to see other prosaic explanations outside that vein of thinking like: "Maybe both the Americans and Soviet citizens saw their respective country's secret Cold War military projects and called them UFOs."