Twenty days after his collapse, Hamlin attended a playoff recreation in opposition to the Bengals. On-line sleuths picked aside the information protection and on-line posts documenting his return to the stadium. They concluded that Hamlin’s glasses and face overlaying had been a disguise and attributed the blurry pictures of him to not a raging snowstorm, however to a extra sinister  coverup. 

Following the sport, tens of 1000’s of posts throughout social media prompt that Hamlin was useless or that his look had been by some means faked, in accordance with Zignal Labs, an organization that analyzes social media, broadcast, conventional media and on-line conversations. Hashtags, together with #WhereIsDamarHamlin, had been trending on Twitter. 

The notion that highly effective forces management the world partially with the cautious deployment of physique doubles is a long-standing conspiracy idea. Lately, such theories have been aimed toward figures together with President Joe Biden, former first girl Melania Trump, Russian President Vladimir Putin and pop star Avril Lavigne. 

Attributing any high-profile dying or damage to a vaccine is a typical anti-vaccine tactic. In December 2020, conspiracy theorists incorrectly concluded that a Tennessee nurse who fainted after her vaccine was dead. The idea persists two years later, regardless of quite a few reality checks and up to date movies posted to social media. Related campaigns have focused individuals who died from causes unrelated to the vaccine. These included the current deaths of journalist Grant Wahl and ABC News producer Dax Tejera. 

However Hamlin’s on-field damage posed a singular alternative for anti-vaccine activists to achieve new audiences. 

About 23 million folks had been watching the soccer recreation throughout which he collapsed. As a medical staff labored on him, anti-vaccine activists flooded social media websites with unfounded claims {that a} vaccine was by some means guilty. 

Hamlin’s damage got here throughout a surge in anti-vaccine misinformation that attributes any current dying, with out proof, to vaccines. 

A lot of the misinformation got here from a handful of serial misinformers, together with longtime anti-vaccine activists, conspiracy theorists and podcasters. Main the cost was Stew Peters, a right-wing podcaster and conspiracy theorist who made “Died Abruptly,” a documentary-style video that incorrectly argues that persons are dying in droves as a result of vaccine, which was engineered by an elite cabal to depopulate the planet. 

Regardless of its well-chronicled flaws, the movie went viral. On the choice video platform Rumble, it racked up practically 17 million views and Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., has tweeted approvingly of the movie. The filmmakers have 261,000 followers on Twitter the place they solicit donations. 

Fox Information host Tucker Carlson has additionally amplified the false theories, together with the unsupported declare that vaccine-related cardiac arrests have elevated amongst athletes. Dallas heart specialist and anti-vaccine podcaster Peter McCullough claimed on Carlson’s present that “vaccine-induced myocarditis” might have brought on Hamlin’s damage. 

Neither Hamlin nor the Buffalo Payments responded to requests for remark. Whereas nonetheless recovering, Hamlin has tweeted a photo of himself in entrance of a mural painted in his honor., seemingly winking on the conspiracy idea. He captioned it, “Clone.”