Deceptive videos used to link athlete deaths to COVID shots

By ANGELO FICHERA and SOPHIA TULP
Associated Press

Jake West was a seemingly healthy 17-year-old before he collapsed during football practice and died of sudden cardiac arrest. It happened in 2013, years before the coronavirus pandemic — but that hasn’t stopped headlines about his death from being misappropriated in a widely shared video seeking to cast doubt on COVID-19 vaccines. It’s just one example of such videos in circulation, which often contain dozens of examples of players collapsing. They use deceptive techniques to push the unsubstantiated claim that vaccines are to blame, but experts say the videos use highly effective misinformation strategies to create suspicion while offering little to no evidence.