{"id":5077,"date":"2023-10-31T16:55:14","date_gmt":"2023-10-31T21:55:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/?p=5077"},"modified":"2023-10-31T16:55:18","modified_gmt":"2023-10-31T21:55:18","slug":"matthew-perry-deserved-better-than-diedsuddenly","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/2023\/10\/31\/matthew-perry-deserved-better-than-diedsuddenly\/","title":{"rendered":"Matthew Perry Deserved Better Than #DiedSuddenly"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Wired<\/a> <\/p>\n\n\n\n

IT DIDN\u2019T TAKE<\/strong> long for news of actor Matthew Perry\u2019s death to go public. TMZ broke the story so early that paparazzi had already camped out to photograph the Friends<\/em> star\u2019s grieving parents as they arrived on the scene.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The vulturous routines of the celebrity death news complex are, at this point, predictable. Tabloids compete for 911 call recordings, statements from famous friends, autopsy reports, even glimpses of remains; the cause of death, if unclear, is fervently debated. It is a tough business, brazen and disrespectful, but one that looks wholly quaint next to a newer post-death ritual that emerged during the\u00a0Covid-19<\/a>\u00a0pandemic. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the past few years, anti-vaccine activists have latched onto tragedies by insinuating or flat-out stating that unexpected deaths of all kinds were caused by adverse reactions to Covid vaccines, although evidence does not support their assertions. They often use<\/a> the hashtag #DiedSuddenly<\/a> to spread their widely debunked theories on X (formerly Twitter), but the phenomenon is not limited to social media. In November 2022, right-wing radio host Stew Peters released a film, Died Suddenly<\/em>, that created a new avenue to push misinformation. Former Fox News host Tucker Carlson amplified<\/a> the message when a guest on his show speculated that Covid-vaccine-induced myocarditis had caused NFL player Damar Hamlin\u2019s cardiac arrest in January 2023. (Hamlin’s doctors later determined his collapse was caused by commotio cordis.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The #DiedSuddenly movement often focuses on public figures, like\u00a0soccer reporter Grant Wahl<\/a>\u00a0and songwriter and Elvis scion\u00a0Lisa-Marie Presley<\/a>. But it frequently targets regular people too. The movement will often antagonize families of the deceased, making their bleakest days even harder by spreading lies about how their loved ones died. One of the most harrowing, heartbreaking\u00a0testimonies<\/a>\u00a0capturing the damage this movement can do comes from journalist Billy Ball, who lost his six-year-old son in an accident earlier this year. #DiedSuddenly believers taunted Ball about his child\u2019s death, ignoring all medical evidence and human decency to harass a grieving father.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Continue reading<\/a><\/p>\npPvGTo dubV L <\/a><\/div><\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Wired IT DIDN\u2019T TAKE long for news of actor Matthew Perry\u2019s death to go public. TMZ broke the story so early that paparazzi had already camped out to photograph the Friends star\u2019s grieving parents as they arrived on the scene. The vulturous routines of the celebrity death news complex are, at this point, predictable. Tabloids compete for 911 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":11,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[17],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5077","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-misinformation-disinformation-and-conspiracy-theories"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5077","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/11"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5077"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5077\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5078,"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5077\/revisions\/5078"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5077"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5077"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5077"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}