Conservative YouTube star Lynette Hardaway — the “Diamond” of “Diamond and Silk” fame — did not die of COVID-19 as numerous liberals on social media had (sometimes gleefully) speculated.
Ms. Hardaway, 51, died of heart disease due to chronic high blood pressure, the Associated Press reported Monday, citing her death certificate.
“COVID-19 was not listed as a cause or contributing factor on her death certificate, which was provided to the AP by the Hoke County Register of Deeds and was signed by a local doctor. No autopsy was performed,” the Associated Press wrote.
The family had not released the cause of death.
But for months since a November hospitalization, commentators hostile to the duo had spread conspiracy theories, much of them based on a now-deleted article from November on the Black-news site Blavity.
The Blavity article, saying Ms. Hardaway’s acknowledged hospitalization was for COVID, cited no sources for the assertion, named or unnamed.
Despite both women having denied that the virus had put Ms. Hardaway in the hospital, the Blavity article was nevertheless circulated widely in the days after Ms. Hardaway’s death Jan. 8.
Bishop Talbert Swan, an NAACP chapter president, spread the false information and called it ironic.
“Lynette Hardaway, aka ‘Diamond’ from the MAGA Trump supporting duo Diamond and Silk, died from contracting what she called ‘a hoax’ better known as COVID-19. The irony is palpable,” he wrote barely a day after Ms. Hardaway died.
“So wait I thought Covid was fake and as far as we know fake doesn’t get u sick I mean — right?” an anonymous Twitter user gloated over Thanksgiving.
Diamond and Silk had lost some of their social-media access and their positions with Fox News for their skepticism of official COVID-19 narratives and the vaccines.
