The Claim:
An anti-vax physician tweeter (who frequently attempts to link the COVID-19 vaccine to individual cases of people dying suddenly or emerging with new health conditions) is at it again. This time, he’s trying to claim a link between the COVID vaccine and a teenager who had a stroke in November 2022.
The Facts:
In a series of tweets, this author suggests the COVID vaccines are linked to a number of cardiac events, strokes, and deaths.
In this particular tweet, our tweeter attempts to support his claim by highlighting an article about a young middle school student who suffered a stroke. However, if you look at the article itself, it reports that the stroke was a result of a virus called Focal cerebral Arteriopathy (FCA). There is no mention of the COVID vaccine.
There is a name for this tactic of using loads of individually weak examples to overwhelm the reader: it’s called a gish gallop. When you start to look at the examples individually (like this teenage stroke example) and the underlying claim (COVID vaccines cause new health conditions), it often falls apart.