No, Patients Did Not Eat Each Other After Getting Covid-19 Vaccine
Jan 2, 2021 | Pratirodh Bureau
FILE PHOTO: A woman holds a small bottle labeled with a 'Vaccine COVID-19' sticker and a medical syringe, in this illustration taken on April 10, 2020
An image has been shared hundreds of times in multiple Facebook and Twitter posts that claim it shows a television report about violence breaking out at a US hospital after patients were vaccinated against the novel coronavirus.
The claim is false: the photo in the purported report has circulated online since February 2019 in reports about US gun violence, one year before the coronavirus pandemic. The image has been manipulated for comedic effect to include a false chyron and has been shared on joke websites.
The photo was shared in this Facebook post on December 21, 2020.
It purports to show a screenshot of a breaking news report in Los Angeles, overlaid with text that states: “HOSPITALS ON LOCKDOWN AS FIRST COVID VACCINE PATIENTS START EATING OTHER”.
The post’s Visayan-language caption translates to English as: “This is how we die….”
Comments on the post from some Facebook users indicated they were misled by the image. One person wrote: “Is this for real?”
Another said: “Oh my God is this legit? Then this will be the start of zombies”.
The photo is captioned: “The trauma bay in the emergency department at Temple University Hospital after resuscitation efforts failed.”
The photo in the misleading posts that contains the text overlay referencing coronavirus vaccination was earlier posted on a joke site on December 16, 2020. Multiple keyword searches on Google did not yield any credible news reports about the purported incident described in the misleading posts.