Do COVID Vaccines Cause Blood Clots?

Why do some people think that COVID vaccines cause blood clots?

The usual suspects…

Do COVID Vaccines Cause Blood Clots?

Ben Tapper, a chiropractor from Nebraska, and some others have been pushing the idea that COVID vaccines cause blood clots.

Blood clots that Richard Hirschman, an embalmer in Alabama, claims to have found in folks who have been vaccinated against COVID-19. Claims that he put into a conspiracy documentary – Died Suddenly.

“Yes, we embalmers love a good clot story, however it seems that the clot story in Died Suddenly is now being used to repackage many of the same old antivaccination tropes we have heard before.”

A clot too far: An embalmer dissects antivax misinformation about blood clots in Died Suddenly

Claims that were refuted by another embalmer, who has said that the clots Hirschman found are normal.

“Clots can easily form after death, as the liquid and solid parts of blood separate and as formaldehyde and calcium-containing water used in the embalming process catalyze clotting.”

The Anti-Vaccine Documentary Died Suddenly Wants You to Feel, Not Think

And that makes sense.

If you have died and your heart isn’t pumping your blood around your body, that blood is eventually going to form clots.

“As someone who has seen the clots, to the non-embalmer, they could be shocking to people who do not regularly see blood clots. It is my personal opinion that the clots presented for evidence do not look unusual.”

Ben Schmidt on The Funeral Science Podcast

Do you know what puts the nail in coffin for this particular piece of misinformation though?

There is the fact that some of the videos in the Died Suddenly movie were from well before COVID-19 and COVID vaccines were on the scene!

But there is also the embalmer’s claim that they didn’t start to see these clots until 2021.

Why is that important?

The first COVID vaccine didn’t come out until December 12, 2020…

The Worldwide Embalmer Blood Clot Survey

But the idea that the clots didn’t show up until mid-2021 isn’t true if you look at their own survey – that Worldwide Embalmer Blood Clot Survey they are talking about!

Many reported seeing clots before 2021 and others hadn’t even seen extra clots.

But let’s get into this survey a little more, which is basically their only new evidence that COVID vaccines are causing these clots. Each year, since watching the Died Suddenly movie, Thomas Haviland, a retired US Air Force Major who became a defense contractor until he refused to get a COVID vaccine, has been sending out clot surveys to funeral homes and embalmers.

In the hierarchy of evidence scale, from best to worst evidence, guess where we find these kinds of surveys?

“We had 179 embalmers responded worldwide to the survey. And of those that responded, 119 of them, almost exactly 66%, two-thirds, are indeed seeing the white fibrous clots”

Thomas Haviland on his Worldwide Embalmer Blood Clot Survey

Considering that so few embalmers responded to his survey, only 179 of the 4,200 embalmers in the United States in his first survey, it doesn’t really provide any kind of good evidence. We don’t even know if they are really embalmers, as he just sent out a link to his online survey and seemed to hope they would find their way to the embalmers.

Also consider that, although they claim the clots are caused by COVID vaccine, these embalmers don’t really know whether or not the people they were working on had been vaccinated.

Unfortunately, although this was all well explained when it first came out years ago, that hasn’t kept anti-vax folks from continuing to bring it up and using it to scare people away from getting vaccinated and protected against COVID.

Understanding These Blood Clots

Don’t be fooled.

“Just looking at those blood clots from the movie, they look like very common postmortem blood clots, and I feel like it was just the shock and awe value of using these images of blood clots taken out of context to scare people.”

Eric Burnett, MD on Experts Debunk Claims From New Anti-Vax Documentary

When making your decision, consider that:

• anti-vaccine folks keep showing these blood clots because they know it will elicit a strong emotional response and scare you and they then launder it through multiple anti-vaccine websites to make it seem important
• while blood clots have been very rarely associated with COVID vaccines, it was only after getting the AstraZeneca and Johnson & Johnson vaccines, neither which are still routinely in use. None of the other COVID vaccines have been associated with blood clots and even with those vaccines, the risk was very small.
• natural COVID-19 infections can commonly cause unusual clotting in many different places in our bodies, so if you want to avoid clots, get vaccinated and protected!
• more than a few forensic pathologists have said that the “new clots” do not look different than post-mortem clots they have always seen, but there may be more clots because bodies have had to be refrigerated for longer periods of time the last few years.
• the RECOVER-Pathology autopsy study does comprehensive autopsies on adults who died with COVID, including those who had been vaccinated – so if there really was an uptick in clots, it would have been found

And know that COVID vaccines are safe, with few risks, effective, and necessary.

More on COVID Vaccines and Blood Clots

• I’m Not Anti-Vaccine, I Just Don’t Believe in the COVID-19 Vaccine
• Ask 8 Questions Before You Skip a Vaccine
• More Questions to Help You Become a Vaccine Skeptic
• Making Sense of Anti-Vaccine Arguments
• Clot nonsense weaponized against COVID-19 vaccines
• A clot too far: An embalmer dissects antivax misinformation about blood clots in Died Suddenly
• US embalmer baselessly links clots to Covid-19 vaccines
• The Anti-Vaccine Documentary Died Suddenly Wants You to Feel, Not Think
• Mike Adams’ flawed analysis of a clot sent by embalmer Richard Hirschman doesn’t demonstrate any link between blood clots and COVID-19 vaccines
• You asked, we answered: Do the COVID-19 vaccines cause blood clots or heart problems?
• CDC Study Examines Incidence of, and Health Problems Associated with, Rare Blood Clotting Conditions
• The Link Between J&J’s COVID Vaccine and Blood Clots: What You Need to Know
• COVID-19 and the Blood
• Scientists pinpoint mechanisms associated with severe COVID-19 blood clotting
• Posts misleadingly link Pfizer’s Covid-19 vaccine to blood clots
• ‘Died Suddenly’ Pushes Bogus Depopulation Theory
• Experts Debunk Claims From New Anti-Vax Documentary
• Seizures, deaths, depopulation: CheckMate looks into claims made in new anti-vax film Died Suddenly
• Fact Check: COVID Vaccines Not To Blame For Blood Clot Risk
• Funeral director’s viral claims about vaccinated people not based in fact
• Photos of blood clots removed during embalming don’t show any link with COVID-19 vaccines; blood clotting risk is much higher after COVID-19 than vaccination
• There’s no scientific evidence that vaccines are responsible for strange blood clots observed by embalmers

Last Updated on March 13, 2024