Here’s a taste of the vaccine-related mis/disinformation going around about the incident involving Damar Hamlin. There’s no evidence that his collapse was related to vaccination, but anti-vaxxers will use any opportunity, even tragedy, to advance their agenda.
@rvawonk not surpring at all, that was my second thought after seeing this unfold live, how soon the antivaxers will start using this...

@rvawonk tag yourself

i'm "the inventor of mRNA"

@takelgryph @rvawonk you took the best one! Fine then, I’ll be “soccer players all over the world dropping dead”
@rvawonk Definitely par for that course, unfortunately. EVERY famous death or illness is because of the vaccine. 
@rvawonk saw this coming last night. Starting with not knowing the difference between heart attack and cardiac arrest.
@rvawonk It’s sad and disrespectful that they’re using this to spread conspiracies and not promoting his charitable works, the wall formed around him for privacy, or respecting what his friends, colleagues, and family must be going through right now.
@rvawonk I made a sarcastic remark yesterday that everyone would be blaming the vaccine today... I didn't *actually* expect it to happen 🤦‍♂️

@rvawonk there is no evidence to the contrary either. He *was* vaccinated, and he has only been the most recent in a long list of young athletes dying from mysterious heart complications since 2020.

Absence of evidence does not constitute evidence of absence. Jumping to conclusions is dangerous, no matter what side of the fence you’re on.

It’s time for there to be a real investigation into all of these sudden deaths.

@ligma @rvawonk

a) he did not die, so this is not a ‘sudden death’

b) this incident is consistent with a well-known cardiac injury known as commotio cardis that occurs when people are impacted at the moment the sinus rhythm of their heart is ascending to baseline; this is a well-studied phenomenon in chest trauma

c) long COVID sequelae cause damage to vasculature & cardiac tissue, so COVID injury is a major factor in recent sudden deaths, NOT VACCINES

@rvawonk @ligma These sudden deaths began occurring (in February 2020) LONG prior to the introduction of vaccinations against COVID in January 2021; is the argument somehow ‘the ones from Feb 2020 to Jan 2021 were all due to COVID or God’s will or some other cause like childhood vaccines but then everything after is definitely due to COVID vaccines?’

That’s patently absurd.

@rvawonk @ligma Just because you don’t have access to the numerous scientific papers published on COVID-related lasting damage to the cardiovascular system doesn’t mean ‘an investigation into these sudden deaths’ hasn’t happened. This is why some of us keep screaming about the fact that this damned pandemic isn’t over.

People will not be happy to know that their bodies sustain significant damage with each recurrent COVID infection.

@rvawonk @ligma media There is growing evidence that multiple recurrent COVID infections, especially those of any significant severity, over time (within 3 years, based on current timelines of the pandemic!) cause deteriorating T-cell health & depletion of the immune system with a syndrome of adverse health conditions. We already have a name for that syndrome caused by a different virus.

That syndrome is called AIDS.

Repeated COVID is not a joke.

@rvawonk @ligma All that said, the main negative effects of mRNA vaccines used in 2021 were a 6-9 month window of increased risk of myocarditis (no evidence that Hamlin ever had such symptoms) and Guillain-Barré syndrome in less than 0.1% of the vaccinated population (lower than with tetanus vaccine); also clearly Hamlin never had that.

There is absolutely no link to COVID vaccination & sudden death other than coincident chronology.

@ligma @rvawonk Unsubstantiated claims about vaccines are biased; why don’t we point the finger at other more obvious reasons for people to drop dead at a young age during the period of 2020-2023, like, I dunno, A NOVEL CORONAVIRUS THAT SPREAD FROM WUHAN & WHICH HAS A PRIMARY INFECTION MECHANISM THAT TARGETS AND DAMAGES MYOCARDIAL TISSUE & VASCULAR EPITHELIUM?

I’m a skeptic & question official narratives, I look past corporate propaganda, but I’m also a scientist

@ligma @rvawonk And with all that said, what happened to Damar Hamlin last night is neither related to COVID nor vaccines unless there is clear medical evidence presented later on to suggest some underlying cardiac condition that he didn’t have as a child

His injury was evident & he had a clear case of commotio cardis; I just hope he recovers fully without any hypoxia during the time he received CPR

@ghoshuvo @rvawonk are you his doctor? Have you actually treated him in person?

Accusing me of being unscientific is rich when you're making a definite claim about someone's medical condition whom you've never met & simply diagnosed using information found on the Internet.

@ghoshuvo @rvawonk

> There is absolutely no link to COVID vaccination & sudden death

I'm always skeptical of absolutes, because they tend to get abused a lot.

Does this mean that a link has been hypothesized, but the data showed no evidence for it? If so, can you provide some references or links to studies done on this subject?

Or does this simply mean "we have no reason to believe this conspiracy nonsense and therefore won't even honor with an investigation"?

@ghoshuvo @rvawonk not true. The "died suddenly" phenomenon didn't gain any popularity or attention until the summer of 2021, long after the vaccines had been introduced.

Yes, people were dying in 2020, a lot of them, in fact, but they were dying directly from COVID, usually after struggling with it for a week or more, not suddenly and unexpectedly, while participating in some kind of athletic activity that would require them being in decent health to even consider attempting.

@rvawonk @ligma A graph depicting trends in Google search in English for ‘died suddenly’ has absolutely no bearing on whether people were actually dying suddenly around the world! This is so unscientific it hurts.

@rvawonk @ligma Something doesn’t have to be ‘popular’ on the Internet for it to be occurring

I’m sure you’re not googling ‘malaria’ right now while millions of people around the world are literally dying of it every year, and Google trends on ‘malaria’ won’t tell you if there were more cases in 2022 vs 2021

@ligma @ghoshuvo @rvawonk what sports were taking place at that time?

@rvawonk "the inventor of mRNA"

OMFG. i'm never getting over that one. it would be hilarious if it wasn't so dangerous.

@rvawonk are you not aware of all the hospitalizations caused by the mRNA vaccinations? Maybe not in this young players case but you can’t dodge the truth now. This vaccine is dangerous.
@rvawonk This kind of cardiac arrest induced by a blow to the chest has happened often enough that there's a specific name for it - commotio cordis.

@rvawonk

The big takeaway here is soccer players are not athletes.