Here we go again: Lisa Marie Presley’s death from a heart attack …

People die every day. Even famous ones.

It’s part of the deal. We are born, we live and we die. The fortunate ones get to live a long, full life. Some don’t get as lucky.

But that’s life — and death.

As I approach the landmark age of 65, I am aware I have more yesterdays than tomorrows. I just hope there is a lot more sand in my hourglass.

When I do die, hopefully “many years from now,” as The Beatles sang, I just hope no one blames vaccines. Because it’s getting damn tiresome that every time anyone dies, someone basically unknown like me, or a famous person, the anti-vax morons pipe up and ask if they were killed by the Covid vaccine.

The most recent example was the sudden and tragic death of Lisa Marie Presley. Elvis’ only child died Thursday after a cardiac event. Almost immediately, the anti-vax crowd started asking if her death at 54 was related to the Covid-19 vaccinations.

Do we know if she was vaccinated? Did she get boosters? That doesn’t matter. They are too busy raising questions based on their own disdain for science. They also ignore the fact that heart disease is the leading cause of death in this country, as well as the fact that Elvis died at 42 from a heart attack, fueled in part by drug abuse and weight problems. Both his parents died of heart attacks as well. It is a tragic family tradition.

Still, the rumors flowed in the hours after Lisa Marie’s death.

Faded country singer Travis Tritt was one of the half-wits who brought it up online, as did convicted criminal and former baseball star Lenny Dystkra. Add in your conspiracy-loving neighbor, the red-cap-wearing Trump crowd and the anti-everything crowd, and it’s a trending topic.

It’s become almost routine. Grant Wahl, an acclaimed sportswriter and soccer expert, died in December of an aortic aneurysm during the 2022 FIFS World Cup in Qatar.

 Wahl was just 49 and in apparently good health. That was enough for the conspiracy folks to jump into the fray armed with misinformation and lies. The nonsense grew so loud, his widow, Dr. Céline Gounder, an infectious disease physician and epidemiologist, decided to interrupt her grieving to pen an op/ed for The New York Times denouncing the lies.

“I didn’t respond to disinformation or harassment on Substack or on social media. I didn’t reply to the email that read: ‘Now you understand that you killed your poor husband. Karma is a bitch,’” Dr. Gounder wrote. “I’ve received these kinds of messages before, including rape and death threats, over the course of the pandemic, but receiving them about Grant was vile, especially as waves of anguish threatened to consume me.

But when these disinformation opportunists recently used the same playbook to blame Damar Hamlin’s in-game cardiac arrest on Covid vaccines, the dam broke. I knew I had to write this essay.”

It’s not just because she wants to tell the truth about her husband. As Dr. Gounder wrote, these deplorables “retraumatize families, compromise our ability to interpret information and distinguish truth from lies and put all of us at risk.”

She said this mindset is responsible in part for the return of polio — yes, really, it’s back — in the United States. The lies are spreading, Dr. Gounder noted, and it’s causing pain, misery and death. She wrote that “fewer people support requirements that children be vaccinated against measles, mumps and rubella than did just two years ago,” according to a Kaiser Family Foundation survey.

Of course, some politicians are on the front lines of the war against science. Donald Trump, the most anti-science president in American history, led his addled supporters down this deadly path. They went along in a gleeful manner, laughing and snarling.

Congress repealed a Covid vaccine mandate for troops, which places our national security at risk according to an informed source — former Congressman Max Rose of New York, a combat veteran who also served as a senior adviser to the secretary of defense.

Like a virus, the anti-science lies continue to spread, fostered by an unedited pool of speculation and misinformation that is one of the worst features of the internet. In years past, such comments would rarely be published or presented by reputable media led by intelligent, discerning editors. But now, with the ability of virtually anyone to publish virtually anything, the wilder the better, it oozes into the public sphere.

The rumors and unfounded speculation also ignores the pain in Presley’s life. She was devastated by her son Benjamin Keough’s suicide in 2020.

“Death is part of life whether we like it or not — and so is grieving,” she wrote in an essay for People magazine that was published in August. “There is so much to learn and understand on the subject, but here’s what I know so far: One is that grief does not stop or go away in any sense, a year, or years after the loss. Grief is something you will have to carry with you for the rest of your life, in spite of what certain people or our culture wants us to believe. You do not ‘get over it,’ you do not ‘move on,’ period.”

Presley had a rough life, struggling with substance abuse for decades. She was married four times, including to Michael Jackson and to Elvis super-fan Nicolas Cage. Her unhappy life was on the edge many, many times.

Frankly, she did not look well at the Golden Globes on Tuesday (where she is pictured above in a photo from Presley’s Facebook page). Was she drawn back to the dark side of celebrity during her trip to Los Angeles? There is no evidence of that so far, and unlike the anti-vaccination folks, it’s unfair to make such a claim. We must wait for credible information.

The sad reality is, Lisa Marie Presley is dead. We may learn more details of her passing at some point, but for the people who live on the fringe, eager to raise questions about science and the still-deadly pandemic, they won’t be satisfied.

They will continue to spread disinformation and nonsense. It’s as certain as death and taxes.

Tom Lawrence has written for several newspapers and websites in South Dakota and other states and contributed to The New York Times, NPR, The London Telegraph, The Daily Beast and other media outlets.