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Statement: Buffalo Bills player Damar Hamlin’s collapse was caused by the COVID-19 vaccine.
NFL player Damar Hamlin remained in critical condition on January 4, two days after he collapsed on the field in the middle of a game due to what his team called cardiac arrest.
As fans gathered outside a Cincinnati hospital to support the 24-year-old Buffalo Bills and other players donated thousands to the charity he founded, misinformation circulated online about what led to Hamlin’s condition.
Hamlin grabbed Cincinnati Bengals wide receiver Tee Higgins during a January 2 game at Peycore Stadium. In front of millions, Hamlin stood up from the impact and fell to the ground moments later.
Social media users seized on the incident and used it to suggest that the COVID-19 vaccines contributed to Hamlin’s cardiac arrest. “Damar Hamlin: Pfizer kills a black man on live TV and then tells us we shouldn’t talk about it,” the Jan. 4 Instagram post read, overlaying an image of a kneeling team in the text.
Charlie Kirk, founder of the conservative nonprofit Turning Point USA, tweeted that this is part of the trend. “Now it’s a tragic and all too familiar sight: athletes suddenly fall,” Kirk said. wrote.
The notion that people “suddenly fall” is a well-known anti-vaccine narrative. We have seen and refuted numerous claims that vaccines cause death or sudden illness in healthy people, including athletes.
The Instagram post and others were flagged as part of Facebook’s efforts to combat fake news and misinformation in its news feed.
Doctors are still figuring out what caused Hamlin’s collapse, but the experts closest to the case have released no findings suggesting Hamlin’s illness was caused by the COVID-19 vaccine. The Bills’ January 3 statement only said that Hamlin went into “post-impact” cardiac arrest in the game.
The NFL has said that as of February 2022, 95% of its players have been vaccinated, but Hamlin’s vaccination status is unknown.
“His heart was restored on the field and he was transferred to the University of Cincinnati Medical Center for further testing and treatment,” Bill said in a statement. “He is currently sedated and in critical condition.”
In a statement posted on twitterHamlin’s family thanked first responders and medical workers at the University of Cincinnati Medical Center for providing “exceptional care to Damar.”
On the evening of January 3, Hamlin’s uncle Dorrian Glenn told CNN about his nephew’s condition. At the time Glenn said NFL Network Reporter that Hamlin was sedated and on a ventilator in the intensive care unit.
January 4th Bills Twitter update. said: “Damar remains in the intensive care unit in critical condition with signs of improvement noted yesterday and overnight. He is expected to remain in intensive care as his medical team continues to monitor and treat him.”
Neither Glenn nor the family’s statement mentioned anything about vaccines.
Experts say the collapse may be linked to heart failure and other heart conditions.
Beyond what is seen in the video, little is known about the circumstances or pre-existing conditions that may have contributed to Hamlin’s cardiac arrest. But some experts who reviewed the footage said the incident could be related to a stroke that occurred before he fainted – a rare event called commotio cordis that is most commonly seen in young athletes.
It occurs when “a sudden blow to the chest causes sudden death in the absence of damage to the heart,” according to an American Heart Association publication.
This is what Dr. Mark Link, a cardiologist at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center, said he thought after viewing the footage.
“When I watch the video, it’s pretty typical of commotio — that is, someone gets punched in the chest, they have 5 seconds to get up and do something, and then they fall like a stone,” Link. said on ESPN on Jan. 3.
However, according to him, it’s impossible to tell exactly what caused Hamlin’s cardiac arrest from video alone.
“A number of things need to be ruled out,” Link said. “They still have to look at other heart conditions to make sure he doesn’t have any underlying heart disease.”
According to the University of Connecticut, Commotio cordis is rare and mostly seen in athletes between the ages of 8 and 18 who play sports such as baseballs.
Dr. Christopher Madias, director of the New England Center for Cardiac Arrhythmia at Tufts Medical Center, also told NPR that the incident looked like a commotio cordis.
“It has to be the perfect storm of events where the chest wall over the heart is impacted with enough force, and most importantly, the timing,” Madias said. “It happens at a critical time in the cardiac cycle. We’re talking about 20-30 milliseconds of the cardiac cycle when the heart is vulnerable to that.”
According to experts, only a few dozen cases are recorded annually.
Other factors may have also caused or contributed to Hamlin’s cardiac arrest, including any underlying heart condition, Madias said.
Link also noted that another common cause of cardiac arrest in athletes is a condition called hypertrophic cardiomyopathy.
“This is a genetic disease that causes thickening of the heart muscle,” he explained.
Hypertrophic cardiomyopathy can cause sudden death associated with the heart, and is sometimes the first sign of the condition, according to the Mayo Clinic website: “It can happen to apparently healthy young people, including high school athletes and other young, active adults.”
According to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, rare cases of myocarditis and pericarditis, inflammation of the heart muscle and inflammation of the outer lining of the heart, have been reported following mRNA vaccination with COVID-19 vaccines. Most cases occur within a few days of vaccination. But the National Institutes of Health said the risk of myocarditis associated with COVID-19 infection is several times greater than the risk of vaccine-related myocarditis.
Our solution
An Instagram post claimed that Hamlin’s collapse was caused by the COVID-19 vaccine.
The Bills states that Hamlin went into cardiac arrest after being hit on the pitch. Doctors are still figuring out what could have caused Hamlin’s loss of heart function. No one close to his case has suggested that COVID-19 vaccines are to blame; and Hamlin’s vaccination status is not publicly known. A growing body of research shows that COVID-19 vaccines are safe and effective. In some cases, they have been linked to heart inflammation, but experts say the risk of heart inflammation is higher from a COVID-19 infection than from a vaccine.
Experts who reviewed the video said that Hamlin’s cardiac arrest was likely due to heart failure, which is common in athletes who have received blows to the chest, or possibly an underlying heart condition.
We evaluate claims that Hamlin’s collapse is related to COVID-19 vaccines LYING.
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