Clapton was unflatteringly compared to fellow musician Neil Young who recently took a strong stance against vaccine misinformation
Eric Clapton has sparked outrage online after claiming people who have had the Covid vaccine are victims of “mass formation hypnosis”, during a recent interview.
The 76-year-old rocker previously claimed he suffered “disastrous” side effects allegedly due to the AstraZeneca vaccine, saying his hands and feet were “either frozen, numb or burning, and pretty much useless” and he feared he “would never play [the guitar] again.”
Speaking to The Real Music Observer in an interview uploaded to their YouTube channel on 21 January, Clapton said he was feeling pretty good nine months after getting “sick with the thing [vaccine].”
On the subject of the vaccines, Clapton told the interviewer he didn’t get the “memo” – or information about “mass formation hypnoses” which began circulating among anti-vaxxers last year – when he received his vaccination.
The story gave the quarterback another chance to spew his anti-vaccine stance while unveiling a new conspiracy theory — that President Joe Biden wasn’t elected legitimately. Here’s the part of the profile that triggered most of the anti-Rodgers pregame response:
Rodgers retorted with a rambling diatribe full of conspiracy theories.
He told ESPN:
“When the president of the United States says, ‘This is a pandemic of the unvaccinated,’ it’s because him and his constituents, which, I don’t know how there are any if you watch any of his attempts at public speaking, but I guess he got 81 million votes.”
After sowing doubt about Biden’s legitimacy despite a total lack of evidence, Rodgers then continued his criticism using totally incorrect statistics about COVID-19.
“But when you say stuff like that, and then you have the CDC, which, how do you even trust them, but then they come out and talk about 75% of the COVID deaths have at least four comorbidities.”
While the right has repeatedly echoed these statistics, the CDC said no such thing. The claim is based on a frequently misquoted interview with CDC Director Rochelle Walensky in which she cited a recent study that found that of 1.2 million vaccinated COVID patients, just 36 died, 28 of whom–or roughly 75%–had at least four risk factors.
