Earlier this year, an 18-year-old female athlete, Victoria Lee, died suddenly with no apparent cause – and the speculation about the reason for her passing began almost immediately. 

Tweets swirled that Lee had dropped dead from cardiac issues as suspicions turned to COVID and its vaccines.

The comments section of news stories about her death was overtaken by vaccine skeptics, while tweets about her passing were also inundated with messages by vaccine doubters. 

In a statement, Lee’s sister Angela begged people to “stop contacting us, stop hiring private investigators, stop with the conspiracy theories.”

A similar situation transpired after Buffalo Bills player Damar Hamlin went into cardiac arrest in early January following a blow to the chest during a game against the Cincinnati Bengals.

Although medical professionals immediately pinned the likely cause on a rare case of Commotio Cordis, their voices were drowned out by those who, yet again, were quick to blame the COVID vaccine.  

Hamlin survived, but the swirl of social-media suspicion roped him into the “#DiedSuddenly” movement.

Also roped in was actor Lance Reddick when he passed away on March 17, aged 60.

Just after his death, #DiedSuddenly again trended on Twitter; as with Hamlin and Lee, Reddick’s premature demise was also blamed on COVID jabs. 

Medical examiners ultimately concluded Reddick died of heart disease; his family disputed the findings, which only further fueled the conspiracy theory fire.

Writing for the Free Press in January, Vinay Prasad and John Mandrola addressed the rise of the #DiedSuddenly movement, a group of individuals who are convinced that there is a pattern of young and/or healthy people dropping dead of myocarditis and other heart conditions they believe have been caused by the COVID vaccines.

Why, asked Prasad and Mandrola, are many Americans willing to believe in an (as yet unproven) surge of vaccine-related injuries and deaths?

In large part, they explain, because our public health apparatus hasn’t been forthcoming with information about the side effects of the jab.

“Trust, once lost, is hard to regain,” the duo note. “People feel that their medical leaders are withholding basic facts, denying reality, disregarding new information, or worse, causing them harm.” 

To be clear, even Prasad and Madrola admit that we don’t know if the vaccines are truly causing an uptick in heart conditions. “To establish this would require painstaking statistical work,” they concede. 

But #DiedSuddenly diehards – and anyone who suspects a link between cardiac deaths and the vaccine – have a right to their skepticism.

After all, as recent revelations around COVID’s origins suggest early theories once disparaged as “racist” or “fringe” might hold water.

And data out of Britain last month suggest that some young women who’ve taken certain COVID vaccines are, in fact, three to five times more likely to die of cardiac arrest.

So much of what we’ve been repeatedly told is a COVID conspiracy theory, it seems, has later proven to be correct (or at least kind of correct). 

But what about the families of those who inadvertently find themselves at the center of these firestorms of speculation?

And what happens when they transpire at the very moment families are least equipped to handle them: While dealing with the sudden death or near death of their loved one?

They’re enduring the worst, yet rather than be given the space to grieve, their phones and social media are buzzing.

When I was in college almost two decades ago, my father committed suicide. It was, obviously, not a topic I was comfortable discussing with friends, let alone acquaintances. And yet, I was repeatedly forced to. 

I have a small window into this experience. 

I would say my father “suddenly died” and in response, I often found myself immediately faced with a barrage of questions.

I understood the curiosity.

Perhaps people wanted to be sure that their dad wouldn’t also drop dead without warning.

Or maybe they assumed I needed their support.

But all of their concern actually made me anxious and uncomfortable, forced to relive my father’s death over and over as I tried to explain the circumstances of his passing. 

As with the case of my father, “died suddenly” is typically deployed to indicate a suicide, overdose, or homicide of a young person because their demise is so uncommon. 

This is why the euphemism “died suddenly” exists: To protect mourning families from having to detail their tragedies simply to make the curious around them feel better.

Rampant speculation from Internet sleuths and commenters is hardly idle chatter – nor without consequence.

It puts families in the hot seat in the midst of their grief, forced to grapple with outsiders who are often complete strangers.

Some will even harass families in person, as evidenced by what happened to the Lees. 

Americans are owed the truth about the COVID vaccines and their possible side effects, especially if more folks are inexplicably dying after receiving the shots.

But this moral high ground is lost if grieving families become collateral damage in the process.

As a nation, we must demand real answers about the health of ourselves and loved ones.

But we must do so without placing grieving families in the crosshairs of the #DiedSuddenly movement.