RIP Shane Warne

We don't often cover sports stories in our newsletter, and I'm certainly not one for writing them, but yesterday we heard the news of the untimely death of Shane Warne, the Australian Cricketer. Warne was only 52 and died of a heart attack.

It didn't take long, but the anti-vax crowd have come out and blamed the Covid vaccine for Warne's death.

Of note are Dr Guy Hatchard - who's been featured by Voices for Freedom, and Free NZ (Liz Gunn's outfit) - and Pete Evans.

Interestingly Dr Guy Hatchard has a Ph.D, a fact touted by those promoting him. If you dig deeper though, his Ph.D is from Maharishi International University in Iowa in the US. His doctorate is listed as a Doctor of Psychology in the department of Vedic Science. He has just three publications to his name. While the university doesn't appear to be a [diploma mill](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diploma_mill#:~:text=A%20diploma%20mill%20(also%20known,or%20misrepresented%20(practically%20useless)) as such, it's not highly ranked, and specialises in consciousness-based education and transcendental meditation.

Pete Evans is an Australian Chef and TV celebrity and has had a bad relationship with vaccines, and was even fined $80,000 by the Australian Health Department for promoting unlawful devices and medicines.

Neither of these people should be trusted for their medical opinions and advice!

While it's sad that Shane Warne has died, he did suffer from Covid last year and was on a ventilator. It's certainly plausible that his Covid infection could have had an effect on his heart which led to an early end. Again, I'm not a doctor!