Matthew Perry

Since 54 year-old actor Matthew Perry died in his hot tub last Saturday, the medical examiner in charge has not yet released a specific cause of death. As usual, however, that has not stopped online commenters from coming up with their own theories, some of them qualifying as conspiracies. The most boneheaded such theory thus far, which can be seen on various social media platforms, is that Perry died because he previously received the COVID vaccination. One such example found on Reddit (which appears to have been reposted from Twitter/X), was phrased like this:

I wanna ignore it but I can’t, Matthew Perry was vaccinated. Is it a coincidence?

Note that the theory was posed in the form of “I’m just asking the question.” Jon Stewart once made fun of the frequent use of this technique by Neil Cavuto and others at Fox “News.” Such a qualifier lets folks raise any crazy, groundless theory they want, e.g., “Was Matthew Perry abducted by space aliens, then returned to his hot tub to die?”

The twist here, however, is that commenters who replied to this online theory about Matthew Perry and the COVID vaccination almost uniformly slammed the people who put it forth. Here are just some of those reply comments: