San Antonio-area militia spins COVID conspiracy after collapse of Buffalo Bills player Damar Hamlin

This Is Texas Freedom Force, the extremist group spreading the claim, is the same one that recently staged an armed demonstration against a San Antonio drag show.

By Michael Karlis on Tue, Jan 3, 2023

Instagram / d.ham3

Buffalo Bill's safety Damar Hamlin, 24, (pictured above) collapsed on the field Monday night after making a tackle against Cincinnati Bengals wide receiver Tee Higgins.A San Antonio-area militia group known for protesting drag shows and stirring up trouble at BLM demonstrations wasted no time spinning COVID-19 vaccine conspiracies about Monday's collapse of Buffalo Bills safety Damar Hamlin.

Less than an hour after Hamlin, 24, suffered cardiac arrest during the Bills game, This Is Texas Freedom Force (TITFF) posted an online poll suggesting that Hamlin's health issue — which the far-right group incorrectly diagnosed as fatal — was related to the COVID-19 vaccine.

"What are the odds the Covid vaccine played a role in the death of the Buffalo Bills player on the field?" TITFF posed in its tweet.

TITFF later corrected its original Tweet, following reports confirming that Hamlin hadn't died. However, as of Tuesday afternoon, the athlete remains in critical condition.

Twitter users blasted TITFF, saying the timing of its poll was inappropriate.

"It's despicable that you would post such a poll at this time," user @DonaldBRouseJr commented on the poll. "You might consider looking up the definition of "class" as you guys have none."

"This is a disgusting poll." You should be ashamed of yourself," user @OGBillyBaroo chimed in.

If TITFF's acronym sounds familiar, it may be because this is the same group that made headlines last month by staging an armed protest in front of a drag show at San Antonio's Aztec Theatre. The group claimed without proof that drag performances "groom" children so they can be more easily targeted by sexual predators.

The militia's tweet about the Bills player's collapse is likely alluding to conspiracy theories that falsely claim COVID-19 vaccines are causing people to drop dead. The allegation was circulated in Died Suddenly, a fringe "documentary" that's been debunked by academics and physicians.

It's still unclear what led to Hamlin's sudden heart attack. However, physicians including Dr. Brian Stutterer, a sports medicine expert at the Mayo Clinic, suspect a tackle during the game might have triggered a rare phenomenon known as Commotio Cordis.

"Essentially what can happen is if you have a blunt trauma to the chest that occurs at exactly the right time in the cardiac electrical cycle, your heart can be sent into cardiac arrest," Stutterer said in a now-viral Youtube video.

Commotio Cordis is often associated with baseball and can happen when a player is struck in the chest by a pitch, the physician explained.

While rare, the phenomenon has occurred before in professional sports. During a Stanley Cup Playoff game in 1998, St. Louis Blues defenseman Chris Pronger collapsed after being hit in the chest with a puck. He was rushed to Detroit's Henry Ford Hospital and quickly recovered.

"This is not something that people should go speculate about vaccines or anything like that causing this cardiac arrest," Stutterer said in his video. "There was a clear contact to clear trauma, and I think a clear reason why, unfortunately, this happened for Hamlin."