‘ALL ON YOU’

Father Details Horrific Abuse by Anti-Vax Trolls After Son’s Death

The father of a six-year-old child penned a heartbreaking essay outlining the harassment he endured after conspiracy theorists got hold of his son’s obituary.

A North Carolina-based journalist and father has shared his horrific experience at the hands of anti-vaxxers after the death of his six-year-old son due to an unrelated cause. Writing for The Atlantic, Billy Ball described how after losing his son in January of this year due to a household accident “likely brought on by a rare cerebral-swelling condition,” trolls online almost immediately blamed the death on the COVID-19 vaccine. The conspiracy theorists apparently got ahold of the story after Ball posted his son’s obituary on Twitter. He described how he was terrorized with thousands of “harassing” posts, including, “Billy you killed your kid man,” and even was even emailed by trolls at his work. He criticizes Facebook and Twitter for not doing more to combat the crisis, saying they will soon “have to make a choice about the kind of space they want to create.” Ball wrote: “For the record, my son saw some of the finest pediatric-ICU doctors in the world. He was in fact vaccinated against COVID-19. None of his doctors deemed that relevant to his medical condition. They likened his death to a lightning strike.”