Truth or Fake: Misinformation about the Covid-19 vaccine and its effects
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Did the first people to get the Covid-19 vaccine die soon after receiving the jab? This rumour spread in France, Spain, the UK and the US - but each time, it turns out it was false.
In France, people were tricked by someone online pretending to know the woman who had been the first to be vaccinated in the country and stating that she had died and her nursing home had covered it up. Spain saw a similar phenomenon, where a photoshopped online newspaper article stating that the first person who received the vaccine had died soon afterwards went viral.
The FRANCE 24 Observers team dug around and found the truth behind these two stories. But rest assured: the first people to be vaccinated in both France and Spain are still alive and well!
Videos lacking context
There are also videos of a different sort circulating online. A number of videos show people suffering from what they say are side effects of taking the Covid-19 vaccine. These kinds of videos present a problem for fact-checkers: as we're not doctors and have no access to this person's medical information, we can't definitively say that they don't have side effects caused by the vaccine. But what's clear is that a Facebook video alone isn't sufficient to be able to know one way or the other, and these kinds of videos help to spread misinformation about and fear of the vaccine.
Check out the video below for more on the viral 'shaking' videos:
