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As of this writing, the reason Hamlin’s heart stopped remains unknown—one possibility raised by cardiologists is an arrhythmia caused by blunt impact to the chest—but that didn’t stop conspiracy theorists from baselessly claiming it was a COVID-19 vaccine.
Whether Hamlin has taken the vaccine or any boosters, and (if so) how many doses he’s had, isn’t publicly known either. He was in the league last season, when the NFL said “nearly 95 percent of players are vaccinated,” so it’s likely he’s had at least one COVID shot, but even if that’s the case, we have no idea if he’s had any since, and most of the already rare heart issues that arose after vaccination have occurred within seven days of getting one.
Nevertheless, some MAGA influencers, such as YouTuber Tim Pool and former Navy officer Andrew Rose, used the incident to declare that public health officials’ were lying when they said approved COVID vaccines are “safe and effective.”
Celebrity doctors who have spread doubts about COVID shots got in on the action too. Drew Pinksy, the former host of VH1’s Celebrity Rehab with Dr. Drew, tweeted “Another athlete who dropped suddenly” to his 2.6 million followers, implying the number of athlete collapses spiked in the last two years (it hasn’t), and that medical examination has indicated the not-actually-real spike was caused by vaccines.
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