In spring 2021, the American basketball player Brandon Goodwin, then of the Atlanta Hawks, developed severe fatigue and back pain, which would force him to miss that year’s NBA playoffs. Several months later, in September, Goodwin revealed in a Twitch stream that he had been diagnosed with blood clots and that his problems began in the immediate aftermath of being vaccinated against COVID-19.
“I was fine… until I took the vaccine,” Goodwin said. “I was fine… Yes, the vaccine ended my season, one thousand percent.”
Astonishingly, however, Brandon Goodwin’s post-vaccine troubles with blood clots have been entirely purged from his Wikipedia entry. The current version of his Wikipedia entry simply reads “Goodwin missed the 2021 NBA playoffs due to a respiratory condition”, without any source being given.
It was in fact his employer, the Atlanta Hawks, that had announced in May that Goodwin would miss the playoffs due to a “minor” respiratory condition, as reported by the Associated Press. In his September 29th Twitch stream, however, Goodwin revealed not only that he had in fact been suffering from post-vaccine blood clots, but also that a Hawks official called him while in the hospital and told him, “Don’t say anything about it, don’t tell nobody”.
For an account of the episode, see Megan Redshaw’s article at Children’s Health Defence. The Twitch stream is no longer available, but relevant excerpts have been preserved by the Daily Caller.
Despite back-and-forth among Wikipedia editors about whether blood clots should be described as a ‘known’, ‘rare’ or ‘common’ side effect of COVID-19 vaccines, as of February 26th 2022, Goodwin’s Wikipedia entry still included the following passage:
On October 3rd 2021, with his season having ended early, Goodwin reported severe fatigue coupled with extreme back pain, and a formal diagnosis of blood clots followed. Blood clots is a common side-effect connected to COVID-19 vaccination. Goodwin has made public he had received a vaccination shot just prior to his blood clot diagnosis.
By two days later, there was no longer any mention of his blood clots or the vaccine.
A Wikipedia editor attempted to justify an earlier deletion of reference to Goodwin’s post-vaccine blood clots by noting that Goodwin had “recanted” his claims. The term is well chosen.
By the time of his Twitch stream, Goodwin had been let go by the Atlanta Hawks. In an apparent attempt to get back in the good graces of the NBA, on October 14th – the very day he signed a non-guaranteed contract with the New York Knicks and just before the start of the NBA season – Goodwin posted an exculpatory tweet insisting:
I don’t have a story. That wasn’t something I wanted to get out there. I got sick. Maybe it was the vaccine maybe it was Covid [I don’t know] I’m not a expert. But I’m fine, and I’m healthy and about to play.
It was presumably also around this time that Goodwin made his Twitch stream private. He is presently out of the league.
Have other NBA players likewise been put under pressure to cover up adverse reactions to a COVID-19 vaccine? Well, on the same day that Brandon Goodwin posted his exculpatory tweet, Brooklyn Nets centre Nic Claxton revealed after a pre-season game that he was feeling unwell with what the New York Post would later call a “mystery illness“. Claxton would not play again for the next month-and-a-half.
News reports described symptoms of fatigue reminiscent of the problems Goodwin was having earlier in the year. On October 31st, the Brooklyn Nets announced that Claxton was suffering from an otherwise unspecified “non-Covid-related illness”.
“Nic is going to be out a little bit,” then Net coach Steve Nash explained:
He’s not feeling well. Nothing to be concerned with but I don’t think he’s going to be back in the next week or 10 days. Just an illness, but it’s nothing major or nothing we’re overly concerned with. It’s just a little more severe illness than we thought initially and I think he’ll miss a little more time.
Mysterious indeed. “Don’t say anything about it, don’t tell nobody”?
Robert Kogon is the pen name of a widely-published journalist covering European affairs. Subscribe to his Substack and follow him on Twitter.
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