Satirical article about Pfizer-BioNTech Covid-19 vaccine 'upgrade' misleads Facebook users
A search of Pfizer and Microsoft's media releases found neither company announced vaccine upgrade.
AFP – Facebook posts shared repeatedly by social media users worldwide claim that Pfizer has announced an “upgrade” to its Covid-19 vaccine that includes a “Microsoft chip for reduced symptoms”.
The claim is false: the article originated on a satirical website. A search of both Pfizer and Microsoft’s media releases found neither company has announced an “upgrade” to any Covid-19 vaccine.
The claim was shared to a Facebook group based in Papua New Guinea on April 14, 2021.
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The post includes a screenshot of the article. The headline reads: “Pfizer Announces COVID-19 Vaccine Upgrade, Now Includes Microsoft Chip For Reduced Symptoms”.
The article goes on to claim that Pfizer released a statement saying it had “inked a deal with Microsoft to integrate their Pluton processor chip to reduce symptoms associated with the vaccine”.
The story then goes on to allegedly quote Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella saying: “This is a great revolution in medicine”.
The post’s caption claims Pfizer put “MICROSOFT (BILL GATES) CHIP/NANO TECHNOLOGY IN THE VACCINE”.
Screenshots of the article have been shared around the world. The satirical article has been shared hundreds of times.
According to a note at the bottom of the widely shared article, the story was originally published on a website called StonkMarket.
StonkMarket describes itself as a satirical financial news website that aims to “provide daily humor and make stonks go up”. Stonks is a deliberate misspelling of stocks which has become internet slang, according to Dictionary.com.
The StonkMarket article includes the same headline and claims as the article shared in the misleading posts, as shown in the screenshot comparison below:
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An online search of archives of media releases for Pfizer and Microsoft found that neither company has announced plans to release a “vaccine upgrade” as of April 18, 2021.
