The prolific “anti-vaccination” Internet conspiracy community has turned its attention to Margaret Keenan, the first woman in the UK to have received the COVID-19 vaccination produced by American pharmaceutical company Pfizer.
In early December 2020, the UK became the first country in the world to approve the Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine and consequently start the mammoth task of rolling it out to the general public. First on the list to receive the vaccination was 90 year old Margaret Keenan, who received the vaccination in front of the media’s cameras.
While generally seen as a positive step in our collective battle against COVID-19, the darker corners of the Internet have instead used it to promote a thoroughly debunked narrative that asserts vaccinations are dangerous or used by governments to track and control their citizens.
A number of conspiracies have targeted the first recipient of the Pfizer vaccine Margaret Keenan specifically. These include the claim that Margaret Keenan actually died in 2008, that she is a “crisis actor”, that she is an actress called Liz Scott and that, even more bizarrely, she has made secret symbols with her hands to covertly announce that she is part of the conspiracy.
The claim that someone is a “crisis actor” is an assertion most popularly associated with US mass shootings, where conspiracy theorists claim that such shootings are fake in order to promote gun control legislation, and those directly involved, including victims and first responders, are actually government employed actors playing a part.
In this case, conspiracy theorists claim it is Margaret Keenan who is an actor, with many asserting she is actually called Liz Scott. Many theories even claim to unveil her Star Now actress listing (see below.)
The asinine premise of this argument being that the government actually employs real actresses with casting listings available on websites to play secret roles in order to defraud the general public. And the only evidence proffered is a casual resemblance between the actress and Keenan.
However, Scott isn’t Keenan, as photos of the pair reveal that they are obviously different people. And this isn’t to mention that many media outlets have interviewed Keenan, her family members, her neighbours and even been to her home amid the spotlight of her COVID-19 vaccination.
Liz Scott on the left, and Margaret Keenan on the right. Clearly different people.
Many conspiracies claim that the real Margaret Keenan passed away in 2008, and claim to have her “funeral notice” as evidence of this. See below.
Ive been digging on that woman that is meant to have taken the first vaccine today… she died in 2008 shes on the “Funeral Notices.co.uk” there is no other Margaret keenan registered in Coventry. I grew up there and the only family I now called keenan don’t know anything about this one … theyre also saying shes 91 but desnt look a day overt 70… another psyop and crisis actor
This claim seems to rely on the incorrect notion that two people cannot share the same name, with is obviously untrue. While this claim did point to Funeral Notices, it linked to a birthday message to another woman named Margaret Keenan who had died a few year prior. Given that the website archives millions of notices, it is hardly outside the realms of possibility that people with the same name as currently living people will appear on the site.
Sponsored Content. Continued below...
The author goes on to claim there is no other Margaret Keenan “registered” in Coventry. It is unclear what procedure or mechanism they uses to conclude this (“people directories”, aggregator websites and other types of public facing data can be inaccurate or dated) but we did find a Margaret Keenan registered in Coventry on 192.com (below) along with Philip Keenan (Margaret’s late husband was called Philip.)
Another silly notion that often fuels these types of conspiracies is that covert symbols or hand gestures are used to indicate a person’s true involvement with a conspiracy. This is reminiscent of an earlier hoax that claimed to prove 5G caused COVID-19 because an image of a COVID-19 cell was printed on a £20 note (it was actually a graphic of a staircase in Tate Britain.)
While Keenan really did briefly make this gesture (other photos and videos of Keenan confirm this) it is simply a common hand gesture that people make, and any connotations made by conspiracy theorists is simple projection.
Objective debunking in a case where the claims are so farfetched and evidence so lacking is inherently difficult. But to summarise, to believe these conspiracies, one has to not only accept the premise that the government is trying to nefariously inject all citizens with a fake vaccine, but also accept that they are employing actresses from public casting websites and requesting they make covert hand gestures that only an “enlightened” few can pick up on, all the while keeping all of this a secret from the general public.