376. The vaccine queue heart attack

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I may have, with this headline, pulled the trick of compelling many to read this article. An unfortunate 81 year old died of a heart attack in Seville, Spain, whilst queueing to receive the Pfizer vaccine. It is always sad to hear of anyone’s death. In this case, however, I think we all, as a species, need to be grateful to the gentleman in question for his promptness. Just imagine the potential consequences, had he suffered his heart attack a few minutes later, just after receiving his vaccination. Global headlines, vaccine rollout pauses, Medical Agency investigations, new conspiracy theories, thriving antivax groups, collapsing stockmarkets… 81 year olds will of course occasionally die of heart attacks, in all kinds of circumstances, but given humans’ capacity to confuse coincidence with causality, this poor chap’s timeliness has saved us a huge amount of trouble, even if depriving news outlets of a much juicier news item and millions of the hankered for clicks. Requiescat in pace

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Location: Hereford, UK

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