No Surge in Athlete Deaths, Contrary to Widespread Anti-Vaccine Claims
Posted on January 13, 2023Sports medicine experts say there has been no increase in sudden death or cardiac injury among U.S. athletes since the COVID-19 vaccines became available. Yet anti-vaccine campaigners, comparing unreliable numbers to an unrelated study, have again spread a false narrative about vaccine safety since NFL player Damar Hamlin suffered cardiac arrest.
How do we know vaccines are safe? For more than a year, anti-vaccine campaigners have been spreading the
unfounded claim that athletes are in the grip of a health crisis suggesting that COVID-19 vaccines have caused a surge in sudden deaths and injuries.
This baseless theory, which had been simmering in niche channels online, flooded social media after Buffalo Bills player Damar Hamlin, 24, collapsed during a game on Jan. 2 in front of millions of TV viewers. He has
since been discharged from the hospital to recover at home. As
we've explained, it's not yet known why his heart stopped, but experts say Hamlin's cardiac arrest was likely caused by an arrhythmia following a blow to his chest, called commotio cordis.
But prominent anti-vaccine influencers quickly posted claims on social media suggesting that the incident was somehow related to vaccination and part of a sinister trend.
For example, Ben Swann, who has
spread misinformation about the pandemic since 2020,
posted on Facebook on Jan. 3 an old video promoting the unsupported theory that there's a recent surge in athlete deaths. The same day,
conservative commentator Liz Wheeler and Dr. Simone Gold who has peddled
dubious cures for COVID-19,
anti-vaccination messagesand
politicized medical misinformation posted
similar claims.
Gold
wrote, in part, "I want to remind the public that athletes being incapacitated or dropping dead was not a 'thing' prior to 2020. We are now seeing this happen very frequently, and it's extremely concerning."
Both Wheeler and Gold cited a
letter to the editor published in the Scandinavian Journal of Immunology that was co-authored by Dr. Peter McCullough, another
prominent purveyor of COVID-19 misinformation. Although its publication may give the letter a veneer of legitimacy, the letter did not include any original research, as
suggested by Fox News commentator Tucker Carlson. Rather, it relied upon an arbitrary list of athlete deaths maintained on an anonymous website that we wrote about shortly after it appeared online in late 2021.
As we
explained before, the list includes students, professionals, amateurs, coaches and retirees. It includes people who
died by
suicide,
car crash and
drug overdose. The list does not in nearly all cases include the vaccination status of the deceased, let alone prove any causal relationship between vaccines and the deaths. In fact, as we've previously reported, some of the deaths initially listed happened before the vaccines had even become available to the age category for the person listed.
Wheeler and Gold, though, each shared an image that highlighted a portion of the letter comparing the number of deaths listed on the anonymous website with the number of sudden cardiac deaths among athletes that had appeared in academic literature over a 38-year period as compiled in a
2006 paper. The two figures reflect different criteria. One number is very broad and includes anyone with a passing relationship to sports who died for any reason since 2021, while the other is conspicuously narrow and includes only the deaths of athletes that were analyzed in English-language academic research papers.
Although the comparison they make is meaningless, Wheeler and Gold leave the false impression that there's been a surge in deaths and further the baseless narrative that there's been an increase in athlete injuries and deaths since the COVID-19 vaccines became available.
But the surge is fiction. It doesn't exist.https://www.factcheck.org/2023/01/scicheck-no-surge-in-athlete-deaths-contrary-to-widespread-anti-vaccine-claims/ 