https://apnews.com/article/coronavirus-pandemic-sports-health-1dc0e46bca518e70ddab67a814e344f4
Deceptive videos used to link athlete deaths to COVID shots
By ANGELO FICHERA and SOPHIA TULPyesterday
Julie West poses for a portrait at the Play For Jake Foundation, named after her 17-year-old son who died in 2013, of sudden cardiac arrest, Thursday, Dec. 16, 2021, in La Porte, Ind. His death, well before the pandemic, has not stopped news coverage of his collapse from being misappropriated online in a widely shared video designed to cast doubt on COVID-19 vaccination. (AP Photo/Charles Rex Arbogast)
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Julie West poses for a portrait at the Play For Jake Foundation, named after her 17-year-old son who died in 2013, of sudden cardiac arrest, Thursday, Dec. 16, 2021, in La Porte, Ind. His death, well before the pandemic, has not stopped news coverage of his collapse from being misappropriated online in a widely shared video designed to cast doubt on COVID-19 vaccination. (AP Photo/Charles Rex Arbogast)
Jake West was a seemingly healthy 17-year-old when he collapsed during high school football practice in Indiana and died of sudden cardiac arrest. A video widely shared online falsely suggests COVID-19 vaccination is to blame, weaving headlines about him into a rapid-fire compilation of news coverage about athletes collapsing.
The vaccine played no role in West’s death — he died from an undiagnosed heart condition in 2013, seven years before the pandemic began.
The video is just one example of many similar compilations circulating on the internet that use deceptive tactics to link vaccines to a supposed wave of deaths and illness among the healthiest people, often athletes, a claim for which medical experts say there is no supporting evidence.
The clips inundate viewers with a barrage of stories and headlines delivered without context, some translated from other languages and offering few details people can check on their own.
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They are highly effective at spreading misinformation using a strategy that sows doubt and bypasses critical analysis, capitalizing on emotion, according to Norbert Schwarz, a professor of psychology and marketing at the University of Southern California.