Lisa Marie Presley and Jeff Beck, victims of the anti-covid vaccine? On social networks, the keyword “died suddenly” appears as soon as a celebrity dies, attributing their death to the vaccine. Despite the complete lack of scientific basis, the rumor is a great success.
Covid vaccination has been a major topic of misinformation since its inception in 2021 and claims linking vaccines and sudden deaths have seen a surge in virality since the late November release of a video titled “Died Suddenly”. .
A guaranteed buzz with every tweet
His shocking images of young people collapsing for no apparent reason, interspersed with anxiety-inducing comments about vaccines, had amassed more than 9 million views on the Rumble video platform as of January 17.
The day after its launch, the hashtag “died suddenly” exploded on Twitter, jumping from 4,000 tweets on November 20 to over 76,000 on November 22.
“An old anti-vaccine technique”, the American oncologist David Gorski abounds on the site to combat medical misinformation Sciencebasedmedicine, while recalling that “there is no evidence of correlation, much less of a causal link” between the vaccine and these deaths sudden
No wave of vaccine-related deaths
Sudden deaths of athletes, lists of deceased doctors… The examples of publications that attribute deaths to vaccines are innumerable and have given rise to numerous AFP fact-finding articles in recent weeks.
Although very rare side effects have been reported, pharmacovigilance does not show waves of sudden deaths due to vaccines, which scientists confirm. The false information that embroiders on the subject of sudden death seems inexhaustible, the majority of the world population is vaccinated today.
For anti-vaxxers, explains Romy Sauvayre, these infoxes are part of a “confirmation bias”: “people who are already convinced[de la nocividad de la vacuna, nota del editor]they will see their belief confirmed.”[delanocivitéduvaccinNDLR)vontvoirconfirmerleurcroyance”[delanocivitéduvaccinNDLR)vontvoirconfirmerleurcroyance”
Vaccines have always been the subject of unfounded fears, he recalls: “the hepatitis vaccine was accused of causing multiple sclerosis, the measles vaccine of causing autism.”
The conspiracy sails in the blur
With messenger RNA vaccines, “we go to another dimension: they are suspected of modifying genetics and killing.” The vaccine would be used “to reduce the world’s population,” say netizens.
So much so that some claim that the excess mortality observed in France in 2022 is due to vaccinations. If INSEE confirms the excess mortality observed by anti-vaccination, it has nothing to do with the anticovid vaccine but with the virus itself, which, according to the WHO, caused 6.6 million deaths worldwide.
On Tuesday, while INSEE announced that France registered its lowest birth rate since 1946 in 2022, Internet users also saw the brand of the vaccine, responsible for a “decrease in fertility”, including “miscarriages”. Again, claims repeatedly denied by many doctors.
Mentions have quadrupled since January
Lining up the examples of deaths to link them, without evidence, to vaccines, constitutes “an inexhaustible vein” of misinformation, according to him.
The death of stars, in particular, has always been fertile ground for speculation, the sociologist points out, taking as an example the legends surrounding the untimely death of Elvis Presley.
Following the cardiac arrest of American soccer player Damar Hamlin in the middle of a match in early January, mentions of “died suddenly” quadrupled on Twitter, according to the American NGO CCDH (Center for the fight against online hate).
“Literally seconds after the death of Lisa Marie Presley or Jeff Beck, the tweets established the link between their death and the vaccine,” says Sebastian Dieguez, “we exploited the dramas to score points ideologically on the vaccine issue.”
Source: BFM TV
