'Anti-Vaxxers' Still Trolling Teen Hospitalized With COVID Months After Her Vaccine Plea

A teenager who tweeted a photo of herself when she was seriously ill with COVID-19 is still getting abused online four months later.

Maisy Evans, a 17-year-old from Wales, sent a series of tweets from her hospital bed in August, urging others to get vaccinated. She also revealed that the infection had left her with a blood clot in her right lung.

Evans wrote: "This virus is not a joke for young people and those eligible must get vaccinated."

She listed the medications she had been prescribed, emphasizing the effect the infection can have even on young and healthy people. Evans posted: "I'm 17 years old and I'm currently taking antibiotics, steroids, morphine, and blood thinners.

"Please continue to take this virus seriously, even if you consider yourself generally fit and well like myself."

Initially, Evans received many messages of support from Twitter users. But these were soon overwhelmed by angry and abusive posts.

The Welsh teenager told Business Insider: "Soon, the anti-vaxxers, the keyboard warriors, came across my tweet. I received thousands of comments and messages—many of them kind, but many of them hurtful.

"I know I was called Satan, a Nazi, an actress paid by the government to push vaccines and, most painfully, I was told I would be personally responsible for any deaths caused by the vaccine."

Evans, who had received the first dose of the Pzifer vaccine only three days before testing positive in the summer, said the abuse was still happening in November—two months after she finally left hospital. "Every now and then, Twitter blows up and I have no choice but to turn off notifications.

"These anti-vaxxers are like mice – they come in hordes."

Many of the responses to Evans' tweets suggested that her hospitalization and the blood clot were the result of her receiving the vaccination. This is despite the fact that Evans said her doctors had assured her they were not related to the shot.

In October, Newsweek reported that the Johnson & Johnson single-dose COVID vaccination had been connected with thrombocytopenia syndrome (TTS), an extremely rare blood-clotting condition.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has found only 50 cases of the blood-clotting disorder across the U.S., out of the 16 million doses of the J&J vaccine administered up to November 10.

The fact that TTS was so rare led the CDC to conclude that the risks of COVID vastly outweighed the risk presented by the vaccine.

The CDC has also reported that there are no TTS cases related to the Pzifer vaccine, which Evans received.

The teenager described her seven days in her local hospital's high-dependency respiratory unit as "the scariest time of my life." She added that her symptoms included high temperatures, dizziness, coughing, shaking, head and body aches, and loss of smell and taste. She added that as the infection progressed she also developed breathlessness.

Even two months after leaving hospital, Evans said she was still experiencing some symptoms and must have regular scans on her lungs.

She added: "Some days are better than others. I often wake up with a tight chest, but I seem to be getting better as time goes on.

"I hope to make a full recovery but I'm mindful that it may take time."