Excess mortality of footballers due to vaccination, a persistent infox

This theory has been very popular for several months on the networks and continues to be updated. She claims that there have never been so many footballers with heart problems as in 2021 and that the Covid-19 vaccine is the only culprit.

This infox appears in different forms every week. The most shared are lists containing hundreds of names of players who have died as a result of heart disease. Always allegedly caused by the vaccine. Some people thus evoke an increase of 500% of heart deaths among footballers, when others advance, for their part, an increase of 278%.

Today, there is no evidence that footballers are more victims of ailments or cardiac arrests. During the incidents mentioned in these publications, there is nothing to make the link with vaccination. These figures, which are not based on any reliable database, are therefore completely false. Contacted by AFP, the commission in charge of “ sudden cardiac death register “In football, attached to Fifa, declares that there is” no more deaths among footballers than before the pandemic “.

“I don’t see so many vaccinated athletes coming to see me with heart complications. »Marc Rozenblat, President of the National Union of Sports and Health Physicians.

For Dr. Marc Rozenblat, president of the National Union of Sports and Health Physicians (SNMS), these figures do not correspond to reality. ” We have observed, among athletes, probably because they have more rigorous medical monitoring than the rest of the population, cardiac complications such as myocarditis and pericarditis, linked to disease and vaccination. But this mentioned increase is false information. I don’t see so many vaccinated athletes coming to see me with heart complications. “

For its part, the Ministry of Sports affirms that ” sports cardiologists interviewed do not find a higher incidence in athletes than in the general population “.

Moreover, when we closely examine the cases of heart problems cited in these infoxes, we realize that the vaccine is never designated as responsible. Some took place before the start of vaccination, and footballers were not even vaccinated at the time of the facts. This is the case with Danish Christian Eriksen whose discomfort on June 12, 2021 in the middle of the Euro match facing Finland had moved the football world.

An infox popular with anti-vaxes

Recently, Florian Philippot and François Asselineau, two presidential candidates in France, shared this infox. The first used the death of an Algerian D2 player on Saturday, December 25 to incriminate the vaccine. However, Sofiane Loukar died of a head trauma. So nothing to do with vaccination.

François Asselineau shared with him a pseudo statistical survey published on an anti-vax site. She claims that one in 600 players would risk a heart problem after injection. Problem, the author is based on data provided by Transfermarket, a site listing players’ transfers and sometimes their injuries, but without any medical expertise. Unreliable data and above all, never mentioning the vaccine.

Demonize the vaccine

This instrumentalisation of tragic events by the anti-vax conspiratorial sphere aims to demonize the vaccine and to instill doubt in unvaccinated athletes. The effects of this disinformation campaign were particularly felt in the United Kingdom among Premier League players.

Certainly, the vaccine can cause, in rare cases, heart problems, as is the case for Moderna which is now not recommended for children under 30, but the risk-benefit balance remains positive. Remember that cardiac arrests in athletes are often linked to so-called silent genetic diseases.