6-year-old Anastasia Weaver’s autopsy results could take weeks. But it took online anti-vaccine activists just hours after her funeral this week to groundlessly blame the COVID-19 vaccine.
A prolific Twitter account posted Anastasia’s name and smiling dancing portrait in a tweet with a splash emoji. A Facebook user sent a message to her mother, Jessica Day-Weaver, calling her a “killer” for having her child vaccinated.
In reality, the Ohio kindergarten teacher has had lifelong health problems since she was born prematurely, including epilepsy, asthma and frequent hospitalizations with respiratory viruses. “The doctors didn’t give us any other information than it was because of all her chronic illnesses. … There was never a thought that it might come from the vaccine,” Day-Weaver said of her daughter’s death.
But those facts didn’t matter online, where Anastasia was quickly being added to a growing list of hundreds of children, teens, athletes and celebrities whose unexpected deaths and injuries have been wrongly attributed to COVID-19 gunshots. Under the hashtag #diedsuddenly, online conspiracy theorists have flooded social media with news, obituaries and GoFundMe pages for the past few months, leaving grieving families grappling with the lies.
There’s the 37-year-old Brazilian TV presenter who collapsed live on air due to a congenital heart defect. The 18-year-old unvaccinated bull rider who died of a rare disease. The 32-year-old actress died from complications from a bacterial infection.
The use of “dead suddenly” — or a misspelled version of it — is up more than 740% in tweets about vaccines in the past two months compared to the previous two months, according to media-reconnaissance firm Zignal Labs in an analysis conducted for The firmly Associated Press. The term’s explosion began in late November with the debut of an online “documentary” of the same name, which gave power to a new and damaging shorthand, experts say.
“It’s kind of an in-group language, kind of a wink, a nudge,” said Renee DiResta, technical research manager at the Stanford Internet Observatory. “They take something that’s a relatively routine way of describing something — people do die unexpectedly — and then lump all of those incidents together in one place by assigning it a hashtag.”
The campaign doesn’t just harm the internet, said epidemiologist Dr. Katelyn Jetelina.
“The real danger is that this will eventually lead to real-world action, e.g. B. not to vaccinate,” said Jetelina, who tracks and breaks down COVID data for her blog, Your Local Epidemiologist.
Rigorous studies and real-world evidence from hundreds of millions of vaccines administered prove this COVID-19 vaccines are safe and effective. Deaths from vaccination are extremely rare and the risks associated with not vaccinating far outweigh the risks of vaccination. But that hasn’t stopped conspiracy theorists from making a variety of untrue allegations about the vaccines.
The film Died Suddenly features a montage of headlines found on Google to falsely suggest that sudden deaths “have never happened before”. The film has amassed more than 20 million views on an alternative video-sharing site, and its companion Twitter account is posting more deaths and injuries every day.
An AP review of more than 100 tweets from the account in December and January found that claims the cases were vaccine-related were largely unfounded and, in some cases, contradicted by public information. Some of the featured individuals died from genetic disorders, drug overdoses, flu complications, or suicide. One died in a surfing accident.
The filmmakers didn’t respond to specific questions from the AP, instead issuing a statement citing an “increase in sudden deaths” and a “PROVEN rate of excess deaths” without providing data.
The number of deaths in the US as a whole was higher than expected since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, partly because of the Virus, overdose and other causes. Covid-19 vaccinations averted nearly 2 million deaths in the US in the first year of use.
Some deaths exploited in the film predate the pandemic. California writer Dolores Cruz published an essay in 2022 about the grief for her son, who died in a car accident in 2017. “Died Suddenly” used a screenshot of the headline in the film, depicting his death related to a vaccine.
“Without my permission, someone took his story to show a side, and I don’t appreciate that,” Cruz said in an interview. “His legacy and memory will be tarnished.”
Other people featured in the film survived – but were forced to watch clips of their medical emergencies, which have been misrepresented around the world. For Brazilian TV presenter Rafael Silva, who collapsed during a show due to a congenital heart anomaly, online disinformation unleashed a wave of harassment even before the film Died Suddenly used the footage.
“I received messages saying I should have died to set an example for other people who were still thinking about getting the vaccine,” Silva said.
Many of the online posts cite no evidence other than that the deceased person had been vaccinated at some point in the past, using a common disinformation strategy known as post hoc fallacy, according to Jetelina.
“People assume that one thing caused another just because the first thing preceded the other,” she said.
Some claims about those who have suffered from heart problems also arm a kernel of truth – the COVID-19 vaccines can cause rare problems with heart inflammation, myocarditis or pericarditis, especially in young men. Medical experts say these cases are typical light and the benefits of vaccination far outweigh the risks.
The narrative has took advantage of high-profile moments like the collapse of Buffalo Bill’s security Damar Hamlin when he suffered Cardiac arrest during a game last month after a severe blow to his chest. But sudden cardiac arrest has long been a leading cause of death in the US – and medical experts agree the vaccine did not cause Hamlin’s injury.
For some families, the misinformation is a sideshow of their real focus: understanding why their loved ones died and preventing similar tragedies.
Clint Erickson’s son Tyler died in September while playing golf near their Florida home, just before his 18th birthday. The family knows his heart stopped, but still don’t know exactly why. Tyler wasn’t vaccinated, but his story made it into the movie Died Suddenly anyway.
“It bothers me that he’s being used like that,” Erickson said. But “the biggest personal problem I have is trying to find an answer or closure to the cause.”
Day-Weaver said it was upsetting to see people taking advantage of her daughter’s death despite not knowing anything about her. Little did they know that she loved people so much that she hugged strangers at Walmart, or that she had just learned how to snap.
Still, Day-Weaver said, “I don’t wish the loss of a child on anyone. Even her.”
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Natália Scarabotto in Río de Janeiro contributed to this report.
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