Social media users shared a range of false claims this week. Here are the facts: Researchers have not proven that more than 1,500 athletes have suffered cardiac arrest since COVID-19 vaccinations began.
CLAIM: Two researchers found that more than 1,500 athletes have suffered cardiac arrest since COVID-19 vaccinations began, compared to a previous average of 29 athletes per year, suggesting the vaccines are causing a dramatic rise in such cardiac issues.
THE FACTS: The researchers cited a number from a blog that lists news stories about recent deaths and medical emergencies among people of all ages, from all over the world — some of which were attributed to other causes.
Following Buffalo Bills safety Damar Hamlin’s cardiac arrest during a game Monday, social media posts and Fox News gave air to a long-circulating and faulty narrative that COVID-19 vaccines are causing a dramatic increase in athlete deaths.
“Cardiologist Peter McCullough and researcher Panagis Polykretis looked into this trend in Europe, European sports leagues. They found that prior to COVID and the COVID-19 vaccines there were roughly 29 cardiac arrests in those European sports leagues per year,” Fox’s Tucker Carlson claimed in a segment Tuesday. “Since the vax campaign began, there have been more than 1,500 total cardiac arrests in those leagues and two-thirds of those were fatal.”
Carlson was in fact referencing a letter, not a rigorous study, that McCullough and Polykretis published in a Scandinavian...
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