About Those Strange Blood Clots

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Estimated time to read:

3–4 minutes

Recently, a friend sent me a screen­shot of a Facebook post from a local preacher/politician. Here’s the post, verbatim:

“We have a fam­i­ly friend that owns a funer­al home out of state, and he emphat­i­cal­ly states dur­ing embalm­ing of the deceased that they have been pulling clots 2–3 feet long out of peo­ple. You know as well as I do that this is the by-prod­uct of the COVID shots and the boost­ers. This is one of the worst atroc­i­ties imposed on human­i­ty. I nev­er fault­ed any­one who felt secure in tak­ing the jab, but my good­ness to force it on the unwill­ing was pure evil. NEVER again America will we ever bow to that demon­ic attack on our free­dom and health. I didn’t take the first shot, and nev­er will.”

This per­son holds two posi­tions of author­i­ty, one in gov­ern­ment and the oth­er in a reli­gious con­text. People lis­ten to his words and take them seri­ous­ly. He should be metic­u­lous about con­vey­ing only accu­rate, ver­i­fi­able infor­ma­tion to his con­stituents and parishioners.

Unfortunately, like many reli­gious and polit­i­cal lead­ers today, this man seems uncon­cerned with what is true. And in dis­pens­ing health advice with­out the cre­den­tials to back it up (only hearsay), he is fail­ing in his respon­si­bil­i­ty and poten­tial­ly endan­ger­ing the lives of peo­ple who take his utter­ances seriously.

Here’s the unvar­nished truth.

Claims that funer­al direc­tors are find­ing long, rub­bery “clots” in bod­ies and that these are caused by COVID-19 vac­cines have cir­cu­lat­ed wide­ly online and go back at least three years.

But there’s no cred­i­ble evi­dence link­ing such post­mortem find­ings to vac­ci­na­tion. Investigations by fact-check­ers and med­ical experts show these sto­ries are anec­do­tal, often ampli­fied by con­spir­a­cy out­lets, and fre­quent­ly con­flate ordi­nary post­mortem clots or COVID-relat­ed clot­ting with vaccines.

Rare clot­ting events have been asso­ci­at­ed with spe­cif­ic vac­cines (notably ade­n­ovi­ral vec­tor shots), but they do not resem­ble the dra­mat­ic “2–3 foot-long clots” described in the post and occur at very low rates.

Detailed reviews find no sci­en­tif­ic evi­dence that vac­cines are respon­si­ble for the pur­port­ed “strange” clots embalmers report. Fact-check­ers iden­ti­fy them as com­mon post­mortem clots or effects seen in COVID-19 deaths (both vac­ci­nat­ed and unvac­ci­nat­ed), and empha­size that embalmers typ­i­cal­ly don’t know vac­cine status.

So what does the sci­en­tif­ic evi­dence actu­al­ly show?

Medical experts rec­og­nized ear­ly in the pan­dem­ic that COVID-19 itself increas­es the risk of clots in veins and arter­ies, includ­ing strokes and heart attacks, with notable rates in severe ill­ness. This has been observed in post­mortem exam­i­na­tions of both vac­ci­nat­ed and unvac­ci­nat­ed peo­ple and can explain more fre­quent clot find­ings in mor­tu­ar­ies, giv­en the mas­sive num­ber of COVID-relat­ed deaths.

Why are some embalmers report­ing these strange “clots?”

The “rub­bery” or ves­sel-shaped clots fre­quent­ly men­tioned resem­ble ordi­nary post­mortem clots, which form after death and are rou­tine­ly encoun­tered. Licensed embalmers and pro­fes­sion­al asso­ci­a­tions have not­ed abnor­mal­i­ties in COVID-relat­ed deaths across both vac­ci­nat­ed and unvac­ci­nat­ed indi­vid­u­als, under­scor­ing that anec­do­tal embalm­ing-room obser­va­tions can’t estab­lish a vac­cine cause.

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If the local preacher/politician spread­ing this false infor­ma­tion had tak­en the time to do a bit of online read­ing from rep­utable sources, he may not have post­ed that COVID-19 vac­cines are a “demon­ic attack on our free­dom and health.”

Then again, it may be that—like many peo­ple shout­ing into the void these days about var­i­ous health conspiracies—he sim­ply doesn’t care about what is true, but only what seems to con­firm his already-held beliefs.

That’s bad enough com­ing from your crazy uncle. Coming from some­one who holds a posi­tion of trust among so many peo­ple, it’s down­right immoral. People hav­ing such posi­tions should be held to a high­er stan­dard than this. 

Sources: Poynter, February 10, 2022, FactCheck.org, 12/1/22.

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