The COVID-19 pandemic ushered in an era of significant change, medical and social, for people worldwide. But not everything is new — despite what some social media posts claims.
“None of these things existed before the plandemic started,” reads the text in a video in which a woman claims fact-checkers and sudden arrhythmic death syndrome, or SADS, are new since the pandemic started in 2020. (“Plandemic” is the title of a video that made many false claims about COVID-19 and spread widely online.)
She also suggests, without evidence, that COVID-19 vaccines cause the syndrome.
“Oh and their new claims that ‘stroke season’ is an actual thing that happens after the flu season is complete b——– too,” the Instagram post’s caption says.
This post was flagged as part of Facebook’s efforts to combat false news and misinformation on its News Feed. (Read more about our partnership with Meta, which owns Facebook and Instagram.)
Fact-checkers are not new as of the pandemic. PolitiFact started in 2007 and won a Pulitzer Prize in 2009. FactCheck.org debuted in 2003. And sudden arrhythmic death syndrome and “stroke season” weren’t new in 2020.
The British Heart Foundation describes sudden arrhythmic death syndrome as sudden, unexpected death from a cardiac arrest in which the cause is unknown. It usually happens when an abnormal heart rhythm goes untreated, the foundation says.
The syndrome has been studied for decades, and research about it has appeared in journals including Frontiers in...
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