A CLAIM SHARED on social media has suggested that the first man to receive Pfizer’s version of the Covid-19 vaccine died as a result of the jab.
The then-81-year-old William Shakespeare became the second person to receive the Pfizer/BioNTech Covid vaccine outside of a clinical trial at University Hospital Coventry in December 2020.
He was vaccinated just after Fermanagh grandmother Margaret Keenan became the first person to get a Covid-19 vaccine as part of the UK’s mass vaccination plan on the same day.
On 20 May 2021, Shakespeare sadly passed away.
Numerous social media posts in the almost-two-years since his passing have suggested that Shakespeare’s death was caused by the vaccine.
One video-based post shared on Irish social media this month, showing Shakespeare getting jabbed alongside news footage of former UK Health Secretary Matt Hancock, contained the claim: “First man to get jab in UK William Shakespeare dies of a stroke in May 2021″.
Text alongside the post says: “They laughed as they ruined your lives. They sniggered at your pain as your businesses were destroyed. They held back a guffaw as your kids were muzzled. They hooted as they injected you with novel experimental drugs.”
The clip was shared shortly after the UK media reported on leaked WhatsApp messages from Hancock, which showed conversations between senior officials in the UK and gave a glimpse into how the government managed the pandemic.
While Shakespeare did die of a stroke, it was unrelated to the vaccine. Reuters has quoted a University Hospital Coventry source who said Shakespeare’s death was caused by a “stroke that was ‘completely unrelated’ to the vaccine”.
In fact, it was reported that Shakespeare was admitted to the hospital before receiving the vaccine because he had suffered a stroke.
The Journal has previously reported on how the vaccine was not ‘experimental’ at the time it was rolled out to the wider public and administered to Shakespeare and others.
Many such claims were made at the time, but were misleading because the vaccines were widely tested and have since been given to millions of people.
All vaccines used in Ireland – Pfizer, Moderna, AstraZeneca and Johnson & Johnson – were approved by the European Medicines Agency (EMA) and were the subject of standard safety testing and three-phase clinical trials.
They have received conditional marketing authorisation for use in Europe, which is granted by the EMA if it deems that the benefits of doing so outweigh the risks posed by a product, after it has been tested during clinical trials.
The vaccines were all approved after clinical trials showed they met the EMA’s safety standards (you can read about this process for three of the vaccines here).
This includes the Pfizer vaccine, which did use a new vaccine technology called messenger RNA (mRNA) to create immunity against Covid-19. But this technology was developed over a number of years.
It is therefore misleading so suggest that Covid vaccines were dangerous by labelling them as “experimental”.
The Journal’s FactCheck is a signatory to the International Fact-Checking Network’s Code of Principles. You can read it here. For information on how FactCheck works, what the verdicts mean, and how you can take part, check out our Reader’s Guide here. You can read about the team of editors and reporters who work on the factchecks here.
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