An Argentinian TV news program provided a startling, slightly inaccurate, as one might put it, scoop when it announced on Thursday night that William Shakespeare, "one of the most important writers in the English language," had died five months after receiving the COVID-19 vaccine shot, in what can only be characterized as a case of someone who clearly should have done their research.
Noelia Novillo, a newsreader on national Canal 26, made a gaffe that simply can not be overlooked when she confused the Bard with William "Bill" Shakespeare, an 81-year-old Warwickshire man who was one of the world's first recipients of the Pfizer vaccine.
Esto es increíble no puedo dejar de verlo pic.twitter.com/Ha8DUNuTYj
— Fato Gloro (@cruziisimo) May 28, 2021
Unfortunately, Novillo did not notice the discrepancy when she announced the playwright's death to the audience.
"We have got news that has stunned all of us given the greatness of this man," the news anchor said. “We are talking about William Shakespeare and his death. We’ll let you know how and why it happened."
The gaffe quickly went viral, owing to the inevitability of a tragic hero making such a tragic mistake.
“As we all know, he’s one of the most important writers in the English language – for me the master," Novillo read her obituary over footage of Bill Shakespeare receiving his jab back in December last year. "Here he is. He was the first man to get the coronavirus vaccine. He’s died in England at the age of 81."
Social media users were quick to respond with their own quips poking fun at the news gaffe, with some joking that there were only a couple of years separating Bill and William Shakespeare, while others praised Bill's centuries-old life, noting however that during the last 400 years that the Bard was 'alive' he somehow was not able to write a single new masterpiece. Someone else asked whether anyone knew if Romeo and Juliet had been vaccinated too.
Bill Shakespeare received his first COVID-19 vaccine shortly after Margaret Keenan, 91, at University Hospital Coventry on December 8. Shakespeare, who was a parish councilor and a Rolls-Royce employee, died this Thursday of an illness not related to COVID-19 or the jab, the media reported.
A few days after England began public vaccinations with the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine, the US formally approved the shot for emergency use.
Over the past few months, there have been reports of blood clots caused by Pfizer and AstraZeneca vaccines. The number of fatalities after the use of the Pfizer vaccine is significantly higher than after the AstraZeneca vaccine, a recent report by AstraZeneca says.
