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Covid misinformation spikes in wake of U.S. football player Damar Hamlin's on-field collapse
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The baseless tweets began to circulate within minutes of Buffalo Bills safety Damar Hamlin's stunning collapse on the field during "Monday Night Football."
"This is a tragic and all too familiar sight right now: Athletes dropping suddenly," tweeted the pro-Trump activist Charlie Kirk, who leads the youth group Turning Point USA. His tweet was viewed nearly 10 million times as of Tuesday.
"Everybody knows what happened to Damar Hamlin because it's happened to too many athletes around the world since COVID vaccination was required in sports," said former Newsmax correspondent Emerald Robinson, in a tweet that was viewed more than 2 million times and visible under the #DamarHamlin hashtag trending in the United States.
Yet as of Tuesday evening, little information was known about the cause of Hamlin's collapse. Nor was it known if Hamlin had been vaccinated against covid, though the NFL previously has said nearly 95 percent of players are vaccinated. The Bills announced Tuesday that Hamlin had suffered a cardiac arrest, and two cardiologists told The Washington Post that a blow to Hamlin's chest may have thrown his heart out off rhythm, disrupting blood flow to the brain. The doctors said they could only speculate after watching video footage of the play.
The tweets' broad and rapid reach, however, underscores how baseless claims related to the coronavirus can ricochet across Twitter with little friction since new owner Elon Musk rolled back the company's policy against covid misinformation in November. The company has also restored the accounts of many previously suspended individuals, including multiple high-profile anti-vaxxers. The moves are indicative of Musk's broader efforts to undo years of work to prevent the spread of falsehoods on Twitter in favor of a "free speech" agenda.
Anti-vaxxers and right-wing provocateurs sought to link the injury that left Hamlin in critical condition and the coronavirus vaccine, without any evidence. Their claims built on years of coronavirus vaccine misinformation that has been seeded across social media.
Public health experts and social media researchers warned that the tweets risk creating more fears about coronavirus vaccinations at a time when cases continue to spread in the United States, nearly three years after the pandemic began.
Naomi Smith, a sociologist at Federation University Australia who has researched covid misinformation, said such tweets risk planting "seeds of doubt" at a time when medical professionals are urging the public to obtain booster shots.
Covid misinformation "does actually kill people who take it seriously," she said in an interview.
"It is a problem that has a ripple effect in society."
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