Why are we talking about the first person to get a COVID vaccine?
The usual suspects…
Let’s Talk About the First Person to Get a COVID Vaccine
And of course, misinformation about what happened to the first person to get a COVID vaccine.
So what’s the real story?
Well, for one thing, the person in Lee Merritt’s post was not the first person to get a COVID vaccine.
Instead, that distinction went to Jennifer Haller, the first person, a volunteer, to get a COVID vaccine in a clinical trial.
“On a visit to KPWHRI on March 16, 2020, Jennifer Haller became the first person to be injected with a COVID-19 vaccine in a clinical trial”
COVID-19 vaccine trial volunteer on the shot heard ’round the world
And how did she do?
She did great, with her only side effect being some arm soreness after each of her doses.
There is another first person to receive a COVID vaccine though.
Margaret Keenan was the first person to receive a COVID vaccine outside a clinical trial.
“A woman who became the first person in the world to receive the Pfizer vaccine this month following its clinical approval has been given her second dose.
Margaret Keenan was given the follow-up injection at Coventry university hospital on Tuesday, three weeks after making history with the first jab.
The 91-year-old, who celebrated a birthday in between jabs, received an injection on 8 December, describing it as a “whirlwind” day.”
Covid: UK woman who was first in world to receive vaccine has second dose
She also did great and enthusiastically encouraged others to get vaccinated.
And Tiffany Dover, the woman that Lee Merritt posted about?
While, as a health care provider, she was among the first to get a COVID vaccine in the United States, she was not the first.
What else?
Anti-vaccine influencers continue to publicize her reaction, but everyone should know that she simply fainted, a known reaction to getting an injection.
A known reaction that is typically not thought to have anything to do with the vaccine itself, but instead, is just about the process of getting an injection. That’s why people often faint when they get blood draws too.
“Social media pages that share anti-vaccine messages have used a selectively edited news clip that suggests the COVID-19 vaccine is unsafe. The clip shows a nurse fainting after she gets the vaccine, but it doesn’t show her quick recovery afterward when she explains that she is prone to fainting when triggered by even a slight pain.”
Anti-Vaccine Posts Use Deceptively Edited Video Clip
Lastly, like the others, Tiffany Dover did great after her COVID vaccines.
Of course, that doesn’t keep anti-vaccine influencers from continuing to promote her fainting episode as some kind of serious issue.
It wasn’t.
It is a great example of how anti-vaccine propaganda works, though, and why you should ignore it…