“Phantom” Vax Shot Stirs Conspiracies

We think we have an idea of what MAY have happened at that U.M.C. photo-op of nurses receiving the Pfizer vaccine. What happened, in front of a roomful of cameras no less, was not a good look.

In the video you see the second nurse taking the stage to get his shot. The video seems to show an empty syringe with the plunger pushed all the way in the “down” position. The worker administering the shot looks confused at first and then SEEMS to go through the motions of giving the male nurse his shot.

As you may know, conspiracy nuts will spin an entire, convoluted theory out of nothing so you can imagine where they will go with an actual video of something this weird. We suspect the truth may be much more boring, although possibly no less dumb.

Here’s the video that has been making the rounds in El Paso:

In the video of the other nurses receiving the vaccine, it appears that all of their syringes are full and the plungers are in the “up” position. In case you couldn’t see the video for some reason the shot in question looks like it was done with an empty syringe. So…what gives?

In most cases complicated, grand “conspiracies” can usually be explained by something much more mundane: human error. After analyzing the video with current and former healthcare workers, here’s what we THINK happened:

The syringes were loaded and prepped ahead of time. Somehow, an empty syringe was included alongside the loaded ones. It takes the guy administering the shot only a second or two to realize the mistake. With all the cameras on, the media present, and the focus on him we think…THINK…the fellow made the snap decision to go ahead and PANTOMIME the act of giving a vaccine shot. Maybe he panicked a little. Maybe he thought no one would notice. It seems that for a brief moment BOTH men realize that something is amiss and even share a brief, blink-and-you’ll-miss-it chuckle. UMC put out a statement later saying, “The nurse in question was vaccinated again” and, “We wanted to remove any doubt raised…and further strengthen confidence in the vaccination process”.

So this is what we think happened: somebody messed up. Maybe it was the nurse administering the shot. Maybe it was someone else who prepped the vaccines. Whatever the case may be, “human error” makes a lot more sense than the yarns being spun by anti-vaxxers, Covid deniers, and their ilk.