Tom Van Dijk: Teen death shows there’s no depth to which anti-vaxxers will not stoop

The tragic death of 17-year-old Tom van Dijk has become a textbook case of how misinformation is created and becomes established as fact in the anti-vax world.

On August 21, Tom Van Dijk died after a cardiac arrest while swimming with his family. He had complained of chest pains and was transported by ambulance to Sydney’s Royal North Shore Hospital. The doctors there were unable to save him.

Tom was a Year 12 student at St Pius X College in Chatswood. His sudden death has shocked the school community.

His sudden death is tragic enough and in normal circumstances, his family and many friends at the school would be allowed to grieve in peace.

But this has not been the case. Tom’s death has been appropriated by anti-vax activists who have asserted without proof that he died as a result of receiving the Pfizer vaccine.

Such was the clamour from anti-vaxxers in the immediate aftermath of Tom’s death, that the school’s principal, John Couani, felt obliged to issue a statement that Tom had not received the vaccine. Not Pfizer, not Astra-Zeneca, not even a flu shot prior to his death. Tom was not eligible to be vaccinated for Covid-19 due to his age. While being treated at RNS, he had a Covid-19 test which was negative.

The statement in part read, “It is very disappointing that a statement such as this needs to be made and the College now asks that respect is shown to allow for the family and community to grieve the loss of this brilliant and talented young man.”

The College continues to mourn the sudden and tragic death of Thomas Van Dijk of Year 12. Tom passed away on Saturday...

Posted by St Pius X College Chatswood on Tuesday, August 24, 2021

Disappointing is an understatement. The attempt to appropriate Tom’s death for the dismal cause of rabid anti-vaxxers is one of the worst examples of their activism I’ve come across. Anti-vaxxers, lie, dissemble, fabricate and conflate. Anything to promote their miserable argument. We’ve become used to it. But this episode shows there are no limits, no moral line that cannot be wilfully crossed, no depths to which they will not sink.

Virginia Nicholls. Source: Twitter

Two days after Tom died and with the pain of an almost incomprehensible loss still raw, Virginia Nicholls, a former ABC journalist turned pharmaceutical executive, now retired, posted on her Twitter account, “A Year 12 student from a Sydney Catholic College has reportedly died of a heart attack shortly after receiving the Pfizer jab at the mass vaccination clinic at Homebush. A champion swimmer, he went into cardiac arrest after a swim. Unconfirmed reports of two other teen deaths.”

Her Twitter post stayed live for just 12 hours, roughly from midnight in the morning of August 23 to midday that day. She took the post down after she had received calls from approximately ten of Tom’s fellow students, many of them angry, all of them insistent that he had not been vaccinated. They were right and she was wrong.

Nicholls regrets making the post. She posted an explanation on Twitter saying the original tweet would remain down until she had “further info.”

It was all too little too late. By then Nicholls’ original post had found its way to some of the most rabid anti-vax activists in the country.

This has become a textbook case of how misinformation is created and how it becomes conflated and established as fact in the anti-vax world. Nicholls’ qualifying tweet was virtually ignored.

The drums were beating in the anti-vax social media sphere. There would be no let up for Tom’s family, for his mates, and for the school.

Any qualification that Nicholls had made initially had disappeared in the anti-vax world. A Sydney based anti-lockdown and anti-vax activist showed no circumspection. According to him Tom had died from Pfizer vaccine as had the other two unknown teens.

His followers who number in the thousands demanded answers, undertook intrusive internet searches and finally as of Wednesday morning, started calling the school, sending emails to Mr Couani, including some faux legal nonsense insisting the principal and the school “cease and desist” from making any claim that Tom had not been vaccinated.

Tom Van Dijk’s death has been seized on by anti-vaxxers.

Other anti-vaxxers linked to a former Melbourne based solicitor, struck off earlier this year, did the same. Facebook accounts of anti-vaxxers went into overdrive, exhorting followers to contact the school to badger and harass people already shocked and grieving.

As I write this, I am unaware of any direct contact from anti-vaxxers with the family, but if it hasn’t yet happened, it almost certainly will.

The sense of entitlement is almost unimaginable, the amorality staggering. This is a form of emotional terrorism, and it speaks of a new battleground in anti-vax activism.

By the way, those two phantom deaths almost mentioned as an afterthought were a concoction, another fabrication. As best I can tell those awful lies came from Info-Wars, the American far right conspiracy theory fake news web site run by Alex Jones.

Social media posts on the death of Tom Van Dijk.

With millions of Australian adults having been vaccinated, or standing in line to receive vaccination and as percentages of the adult population rise towards the 70 and 80 per cent thresholds, the anti-vax battlefield is shifting. The fear campaigns for adults have been waged and lost by anti-vaxxers. Now they want to fight over the nation’s children as vaccinations roll into a phase where teenagers are starting to roll up their sleeves.

It is what anti-vaxxers do best, create fear and anxiety in the community based on lies, half truths and wicked propaganda.

Ms Nicholls, who claims to have no connection with the rabid arm of the anti-vaccination movement, says she is “Shocked at the blowback. There’s no way the school should have to deal with this. It’s egregious and it should not be happening. No logical person could justify it.”

For all that her social media pages are filled with anti-vax tropes, memes and selective news items. She admits to having been present at the violent rally in the Sydney CBD a month ago where police were assaulted and required to make multiple arrests.

She told me she planned to speak to Tom’s parents at some point in future. I could barely believe it and scarcely knew how to reply.

I would suggest she leave the Van Dijk family well alone. I would make the same plea to the rabid, irrational, entitled people that three days ago had hung on her every word. This must stop. Basic human decency demands it. The Van Dijk family have suffered enough.