By Mike Wendling
US disinformation reporter
Activists who blamed NFL star Damar Hamlin's on-field collapse this month on Covid-19 vaccines have concocted another baseless conspiracy theory - that the player has been replaced by a "body double" or even a "clone".
It's an escalation of rumours that circulated after Mr Hamlin's injury.
The latest allegations claim the player is dead and has been "replaced".
The anti-vaccination activists stoking the wild claims on Twitter have provided no proof.
On Sunday, Mr Hamlin attended an NFL playoff game pitting his team, the Buffalo Bills, against the Cincinnati Bengals.
His face was covered as he walked into the stadium, and snow showers in a frigid stadium near Buffalo meant that live TV shots of him urging on the crowd from a booth far above the field were fuzzy.
After the Bills lost, 27-10, ending their season, several influential online accounts opposed to Covid-19 vaccines began to spread rumours and innuendo about the player based on the TV footage - despite the fact that Mr Hamlin had posted a clear picture from his hospital bed two weeks earlier.
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Tweets and posts on fringe video sites and messaging apps were seen millions of times. Some simply cast doubt on whether Mr Hamlin had attended the game, while others went further and claimed he had died on the pitch or even, bizarrely, that he had been cloned.
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