Some COVID-19 vaccine opponents have cast Will Smith as the star of their latest bizarre anti-vax theory.
A group of skeptics has been using the 2007 Smith action flick “I Am Legend” — in which a failed attempt to cure cancer starts a zombie apocalypse — as their latest excuse for them to not get jabbed.
In an eyewear store in the Bronx, owner John Bonizio, 63, says he was met with resistance from an employee who was hung up on the movie when he tried to convince staff to get the vax, the New York Times reported.
The employee didn’t even have a good understanding of the movie itself, incorrectly explaining to the owner that “a vaccine had caused the characters in the film ‘I Am Legend’ to turn into zombies.”
In the film, a genetically reprogrammed virus actually caused the zombie apocalypse.
One of the movie’s writers — in response to “I Am Legend” being used to convince people not to get the vaccine — said, “Oh. My. God. It’s a movie. I made that up.”Alamy Stock Photo
Some believe that anti-vaxxers are using the movie to avoid Facebook’s fact-check filters against misinformation. MARK FELIX/AFP /AFP via Getty ImagesStill, the fictional plot continues to spring up in posts on social media and messaging boards among anti-vaxxers arguing against getting the shot.
Some believe that they’re invoking the movie in order to not get flagged by social media fact-check filters.
“It looks like anti-vax propogandists are using a movie meme to evade Facebook’s fact check filters?” Wagner James Au wrote on Twitter. “It’s ostensibly about a movie, contains no mention of COVID and the text is in the image so the ‘vaccination’ keyword doesn’t get flagged. But the damage was done all the same.”
Anti-vaccine and anti-mask protesters gather at Union Square in Manhattan. Tayfun Coskun/Anadolu Agency via Getty ImagesOne of the film’s screenwriters attempted to intervene to stop anti-vaxxers from citing it.
“Oh. My. God. It’s a movie. I made that up. It’s. Not. Real,” co-writer Akiva Goldman wrote on Twitter.
