Original article (in Montenegrin) was published on 31/01/2022
Associating coronavirus vaccination with specific health problems has been present ever since the first vaccines against this disease appeared. Conspiracy theorists do not stop attributing vaccination to every health problem, even when there is no basis for it.
Associating coronavirus vaccination with specific health problems has been present ever since the first vaccines against this disease appeared. Conspiracy theorists do not stop attributing vaccination to every health problem, even when there is no basis for it.
One Facebook user tried to illustrate this with a compilation of videos in which world-famous athletes are collapsing on the field, and that, of course, is because of the vaccine against COVID-19.
“Compilation of a small part of the reactions that have been happening to athletes since they received the vaccine”, the user said in a video post.
In the first few seconds of the video, basketball player Kiyonte Johnson is seen in the Gators game against Florida, who falls on the floor during the game. The match was played on December 12, 2020. Although his fall is real, but allegedly caused by the vaccine, the chance that it is the cause cannot exist.
The reason is that the first vaccine in the United States was given on December 14, 2020, which was previously reported by the media.
The AP also dealt with the case of the mentioned basketball player and the controversial announcement. In the text titled “Misleading videos used to link the death of athletes with the vaccine against COVID”, the authors explained that Johnson’s collapse occurred in December 2020, before the vaccines became widely available. University officials confirmed to the AP that he was not vaccinated at the time.
Brazilian footballer Alex Apolinário is also part of the controversial compilation. He passed away in January 2021, before vaccines for his age group were available in Portugal, where he lived at the time.
According to Reuters, Apolinário experienced cardiorespiratory arrest and collapsed during a football match on January 3, 2021, and died four days later, on January 7, at the age of 24.
The former Barcelona football player Sergio Agüero is also in the mentioned video. He collapsed in the match played in October 2021.
Shortly afterward, Agüero ended his playing career, but neither his collapse nor his decision to end his professional football engagement had anything to do with the COVID vaccine. We have written about it on several occasions, and you can read more about it here.
Football players Victor Lindelöf, Piotr Zielinski and Martin Terrier, who are also claimed to have health problems after the vaccination, were also targeted by this Facebook disinformer.
This is another misconception and an attempt to misinform, and we have revealed it in the text that you can find here.
So, none of the athletes from the video collapsed due to vaccinations against COVID. It was mostly due to heart problems, which many athletes face. Bearing in mind that this is another attempt aimed at misinformation and manipulation, the content published on Facebook is rated as fake news.
The “fake news” rating is given to the original media report (entirely produced by the media that published it) that contains factually incorrect claims or information. Content that is assessed as fake news could have been created to misinform the public, that is, to present a claim that is completely false as fact.