Former Love Island contestants are posting cringe anti-vax content on Instagram

I think I actually miss the air freshener nonsense

3 years ago

Former Love Island contestants have been sharing cringe anti-vax content on Instagram.

Mike and Priscilla – who moved in together after missing out on this year’s winter Love Island final – have both been sharing content suggesting you should turn down the vaccine, or that it isn’t safe.

With the first doses of the Pfizer vaccine due to roll out in the UK, the pair have been sharing the content to a combined 613k followers.

There is no evidence that the vaccine is unsafe, and it has been through rounds of testing and evaluation.

Priscilla, who has 167k followers, shared a post to her story titled: “How to legally decline a vaccine”. Vaccines aren’t mandatory in the UK, and the government is not proposing to make a Covid-19 vaccine mandatory.

The post, from an account called @politalks_6ix, has been verified as false by independent fact-checkers. Its caption says “the #scamdemic has 99 per cent survival rate !”

Up to the end of June, 0.9 per cent of people who caught Covid-19 in the UK died. However, claims of a blanket survival rate understate the impact of the virus – with the fatality rate increasingly rapidly with age. Up to 45 per cent of people hospitalised with Covid-19 will need ongoing support, says the NHS. Five per cent of people report symptoms for more than eight weeks.

The account regularly shares anti-vax content, and markets itself as “rated R for Real News”.

Meanwhile, Mike Boateng – the policeman from winter Love Island – posted a skit purporting to be government promo for the vaccine. During the video, posted to his 446k followers, Mike continually flinched through the message – suggesting the vaccine had messed him up.

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Mike Boateng (@michaelboateng01)

Ched, Biggs, and Sherif all commented crying laughing emojis on the post.

Reassuringly, the pair were implicitly rebuked by wholesome king Dr Alex George – an actual doctor who has been working in hospitals during the pandemic.

After the posts from Mike and Priscilla, he posted a message clearing up misinformation around the vaccine.

“Let’s be absolutely clear. I am not being paid to endorse the vaccine,” Alex wrote.

“I am happy about the vaccine because I am a doctor who has seen so much death from the virus and want it to end. I am also an individual who has suffered greatly because of this pandemic and want it to end.

“If the vaccine is good enough for our stringent regulatory board it is good enough for me. I will be having the vaccine.”

King. This could, obviously, also be seen as a retort to the general anti-vax sentiment going around.

It’s not the first time Love Islanders have been posting ridiculous Covid content.. Callum Jones from winter Love Island shared a meme on his Insta story four months ago which suggested Covid death counts were exaggerated.

The post claim that people who had Covid, recovered, and then died of something separate two months later would be counted towards the UK’s Covid death toll. His “rigged” comment suggested the UK’s Covid death count was fraudulent and exaggerated.

While the UK does calculate Covid deaths this way, a review of the statistics found that just five per cent (or 2,000 out of a total 40,500 as of July 15th) of the UK’s Covid deaths were of people who died more than 28 days after testing positive, and who did not have Covid-19 as the main cause of death.

Fact-checking website Full-Fact also concluded that the statistics also don’t count cases where somebody has died of Covid-19 without testing positive, and so “while the PHE figures appear to slightly overestimate the number of people who tested positive for Covid-19 and died from it, they likely underestimate the true number of people who have died from Covid-19.”