Veteran TV and radio personality Jeremy Mansfield passed away at 59 after his battle with stage 4 liver cancer.
Mansfield appeared on various radio and TV shows during his career. These included 702 and 94.7 and game shows.
While Mansfield was diagnosed with cancer twice in his life – the first time with leukaemia in 2009 – it was his battle with liver cancer in 2022 that claimed his life.
In August 2022, the beloved media personality took to Facebook to reveal his cancer was terminal and only subject to palliative care.
This ultimately resulted in him being made fun of for how he looked. On social media, it appears that Covid-19 conspiracy theorists made fun of the late radio host's death and connected it to receiving a Covid-19 vaccination.
Anti-vaxxers have cited Mansfield's rant from 2021 about those who refused to receive the Covid-19 vaccination in a post that has since surfaced on social media.
The post – dated December 1, 2021 – read: “I am sick and tired of the anti-vaxxer, unfounded, unattributed bulls**t they spread. I salute the Wits Senate for acknowledging the fact that the vaccinated hold the rights.
Either go and get vaccinated or walk around without a mask in public so that those of us who have shown responsibility can see what f**king stupid actually looks like”.
In March of 2020, the Covid-19 virus reached pandemic status. Since then, the virus has ravaged its way through the globe, infecting more than 100 million people and resulting in more than 6 million deaths worldwide.
As the world struggled to come to terms with the ramifications of the disease, several vaccinations were trialled and created to combat the virus.
While we are aware that vaccination rollout has always been met with a little hesitancy as governments around the globe have struggled to convince portions of their populations to participate in vaccination protocols, which ultimately birthed a new movement of people who do not wish to get vaccinated as a lifestyle choice - anti-vaxxers.
Some cite reasons such as the FDA giving companies an emergency status to rush Covid-19 vaccinations although the FDA hasn't had enough time to conduct long-term studies to prove the vaccine's long-term effects or something as ridiculous as Covid-19 vaccination has been chipped with 5g or fear of going infertile.
Even if the debate over vaccines has subsided, tweets condemning vaccines are still common on social media, with comments like:NyanakaMshumayeli@MbanjwaWest
“Is his family just going to this lie or pursue Ramaphosa for saying vaccines are safe and effective..🤷🏾♂️ Jeremy Mansfield #VaccineSideEffects #vaccineinjuries #PfizerLiedPeopleDied@HealthZA”
@SA_Mum: “He was cancer free for 13 years…he had leukemia in 2009 which he beat. But was then diagnosed with liver cancer at the beginning of this year. There has been a huge increase in cancer diagnosis since they rolled out the Covid vaccine”
However, these responses to a complicated problem are more harmful than helpful. How is cancer even related to Covid-19?
Some of us are living testimony that vaccines work. Vaccines have been one of the major revolutions in the history of mankind, and during the twentieth century, they eliminated most of the childhood diseases that used to cause millions of deaths.
As we have seen with the coronavirus epidemic, vaccines are still a key component of preserving people's health.
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