This phenomenon reminds me of why people can make the same connection between autism and vaccines.
In a book titled "Vaccinated: One Man's Quest to Defeat the World's Deadliest Diseases", the author included a story of how a kid was just about to be vaccinated, and just then, seconds before the syringe was inserted, the kid had his first ever seizure.
Of course, the cause was due to something else, but this seizure was the first of a life of seizures, and if the kid had gotten vaccinated just seconds later, there would be absolutely no convincing the parents of this kid that the vaccination was not the causal factor for his seizures, because until that moment, they'd never manifested.
Correlation does not equal causation. We must always remember that.
RE: Fan Death - A Curious Superstition