SAN FRANCISCO (KCBS RADIO) – The recent collapse of Buffalo Bills football player Damar Hamlin has led to a spate of misinformation about COVID-19 vaccinations.
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Hamlin's cardiac episode on Monday in Cincinnati spurred a new wave of anti-vaccine information to go out in the following days.
"It's really kind of sad, also, for this young man to be so seriously ill and then to use this event for people’s own political purposes," said Dr. Dean Blumberg, an infectious disease specialist with UC Davis Health on KCBS Radio’s "Ask an Expert" on Wednesday with Eric Thomas and Margie Shafer.
Despite being nearly three years into the pandemic, misinformation is still pervasive and can spread rapidly online. It’s important for people to continue to seek out official sources if they have questions about the virus.
These sources include the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention as well as the FDA, which has been quite transparents particularly about the vaccination approval process.
"All the information is out there and I wouldn't listen to these pundits who are not scientists or twist the information for their own purposes," said Blumberg.
In events like this, people like to take something that’s seemingly related and they try to link it to something that’s not related.
"We do know that there’s a very small risk of myocarditis – inflammation of the heart – in young men who are vaccinated," he said.
But it looks nothing like what happened to Hamlin. Comparing the small risk of myocarditis to the risk of contracting COVID-19 and dying, the benefits of the vaccine outweigh the risk.
"All medicines have adverse effects, it's a matter of looking at whether the benefits outweigh the risks or not," said Blumberg.
But again, it's clear that what happened to Hamlin is different, and if people take a closer look at the sequence of events they can more accurately speculate.
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