
The Facebook videos were short but unsettling. One, posted on the profile of Indiana resident Shawn Skelton, shows her shuddering on what looks like a hospital bed, an exhausted look on her face. In another, Skelton spends over a minute sticking her tongue out as it writhes oddly. Three other videos – all just a few seconds long – were posted by Louisiana-based Brant Griner, and feature his mother Angelia Gipson Desselle violently trembling and struggling to walk in a dimly-lit hospital room.
The videos all made the same claims: both Skelton and Desselle had been vaccinated for Covid-19 shortly before developing their tremors, and the vaccine, they alleged, was to blame. There is no evidence that this is the case. But, on Facebook, the truth rarely matters. For days, the videos spread unchecked, racking up millions of views and tens of thousands of comments….