“There are no side effects,” says the Pfizer spokesman, “in fact I’m boosted four times myself” – he can’t get any further because he collapses. The video by the conservative satirical site Babylon Bee, which shows a Pfizer press conference on the corona vaccination, hits social networks like a bomb. The umpteen times boosted speakers of the pharmaceutical company collapse in rows when trying to emphasize the safety and freedom from side effects of the vaccination, until in the end only the (unvaccinated) caretaker is left.
“Would we vaccinate seven billion people if there were side effects?” asks the second spokeswoman, who previously dismissed all reports of adverse reactions after the Covid shot as right-wing and allegedly Russian conspiracy theory. Then she falls over. It takes five speakers to say that healthy people have always had heart problems in rows and that the sudden increase in cases should under no circumstances be attributed to vaccination – unconscious people should now be piling up on the floor around the lectern. At the end, a janitor with a mop trots in front of the camera and observes the misery. “Why don’t you fall over? Are you vaccinated?” It asks off screen. “No,” he says, and elaborates: “I’m not an idiot, I want to live!”
It’s debatable whether vaccine side effects and suddenly collapsing people should be mocked. After all, there are various videos in which, for example, moderators actually collapse in front of the camera: a shock for those affected, the team on site and the viewer in front of the television. At the latest since Jan Böhmermann, financed by compulsory fees, compared children on ZDF with rats spreading the plague, we have known: satire is allowed to do anything. According to commentators on social networks, the Babylon Bee clip illustrates the absurdity of consistently denying side effects. “This is no longer satire, it has become truth,” says a YouTube user. Another notes: “What I love is that the man who is said to be the most uneducated makes the wisest decision and doesn’t get vaccinated. He has common sense.”