Anti-Vaxxers Are Exploiting Damar Hamlin’s Medical Emergency

Monday Night Football stopped. Buffalo Bills and Cincinnati Bengals fans, no longer cheering for their respective teams to win, stood shoulder to shoulder outside the Ohio hospital where NFL player Damar Hamlin had been transported, after suffering a cardiac arrest on the field. Overnight, football supporters nationwide donated millions to Hamlin’s charity, as part of an outpouring of thoughts and prayers for the 24-year-old athlete to recover. But in ultraconservative corners of the country, a very different response to Hamlin’s medical emergency emerged Monday night; right-wing talking heads and anti-vaccine influencers began exploiting the life-threatening injury for conspiratorial fodder.

“This is a tragic and all too familiar sight right now: Athletes dropping suddenly,” wrote Charlie Kirk, who leads the pro-Trump youth group Turning Point USA. He shared the tweet, seemingly a reference to the debunked “#DiedSuddenly” meme—a conspiracy theory that blames a wide swath of untimely deaths on vaccines—shortly after the injury occurred, when paramedics were still scrambling to save Hamlin’s life. Celebrity doctor Drew Pinsky and conservative pundit Grant Stinchfield used the same framing to comment on Hamlin’s collapse. “I know what everyone with any common sense is thinking. This isn’t the first time a pro athlete had this happen,” tweeted Stinchfield with syringe emojis, apparently blaming the incident on the NFL’s past vaccine policies.

Hamlin collapsed after a hit to his chest. “His heartbeat was restored on the field and he was transferred to the [University of Cincinnati] Medical Center for further testing and treatment,” the Buffalo Bills wrote in a statement, adding that Hamlin was “listed in critical condition.” The Bills player is not the first professional athlete to sustain such an injury during a live sporting event. In 1998, long before COVID-19 or its vaccines were around, former NHL player Chris Pronger went into cardiac arrest mid-game after taking a hockey puck to the chest. “Prayers that Damar Hamlin can have the same outcome that I was fortunate to have with my incident,” Pronger tweeted on Tuesday.

Of course, decades of medical knowledge on how the phenomenon impacts athletes did not deter other anti-vaxxers from gleefully pouncing on the tragedy. “Welp, a lot of people are going to wake up to the truth tonight,” wrote Rogan O’Handley, a video host for conservative advocacy group PragerU, which has a major online audience, even on college campuses. Actor Kevin Sorbo, meanwhile, was far more explicit in his crackpot assessment. “It’s the jab,” tweeted the TV star turned evangelical filmmaker.

This reaction to Hamlin’s injury is yet another reminder of the long-lasting impacts of the politicization of the COVID-19 pandemic, which has led to a surge in anti-vaccine sentiment. Last year, these sentiments were even heard in the Senate, from Wisconsin Republican Ron Johnson, who repeatedly downplayed the pandemic and promoted unproven home remedies. Johnson himself was an early adopter of the #DiedSuddenly talking point in an interview with Charlie Kirk last January. “We’ve heard story after story…[of] all these athletes dropping dead on the field, but we’re supposed to ignore that,” he said. Johnson was reelected in November.