Kansas City Chiefs tight end Travis Kelce celebrated a touchdown in a Jan. 21 NFL playoff game by forming a heart with his hands — which many Swifties saw as a nod to his pop star girlfriend, Taylor Swift.
But some social media users drew a sinister connection.
A Jan. 22 Instagram post shared a photo of Kelce making a heart gesture with text above it that read, “Mr. Pfizer showing you which organ the vaccine shuts off.”
The post’s caption said, “He’s telling you loud and clear! Remember to protect your HEART and say NO (to) the clot shots!”
Another Instagram post made a similar claim that Kelce was showing Swift “which organ the Pfizer vaccine shuts off.”
(Screengrab from Instagram)
These posts were flagged as part of Meta’s efforts to combat false news and misinformation on its News Feed. (Read more about our partnership with Meta, which owns Facebook and Instagram.)
The COVID-19 vaccine is not causing widespread heart failure. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and other public health authorities have found the vaccine to be safe and effective. Adverse effects from the vaccine are rare.
The CDC reported that as of May, more than 676 million doses of the COVID-19 vaccine had been administered in the United States. (Because of the end of the federal COVID-19 public health emergency, the CDC has limited ability to maintain updated data on vaccinations.)
Some critics of the COVID-19 vaccine point to deaths reported in the federal government’s Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System. But with VAERS, anyone can report health effects that occur after a vaccination, whether or not those effects are caused by the vaccine, the CDC said. And unlike other government data sources, these reports aren’t screened before they’re made public, making VAERS fertile ground for vaccine misinformation.
In rare instances, myocarditis, or inflammation of the heart muscle, has been linked to mRNA COVID-19 vaccines, the CDC said. These cases were more common among adolescent and young men within a week of receiving a second dose of the COVID-19 vaccine. Most patients had mild cases of myocarditis and recovered quickly.
In September, Kelce appeared in a Pfizer advertisement encouraging people to get both the flu and updated COVID-19 shots. Since then, Kelce has been the subject of anti-vaccine rhetoric online.
The photo of Kelce making a heart with his hands is authentic. It was taken during the Chiefs’ Jan. 21 divisional round playoff victory over the Buffalo Bills. Kelce told his brother Jason during a Jan. 24 episode of their “New Heights” podcast that the heart-hand gesture was meant to “spread the love” to Bills fans.
The Chiefs will play the San Francisco 49ers on Feb. 11 in Super Bowl LVIII.
We rate the claim that the Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine “shuts off” recipients’ hearts False.