Mamma Mia! Italian Man Attempts to Evade COVID Vaccination With Fake Arm
You really have to "hand" it to him ;)
Oh, marone. I know being anti-vax is not particularly humerus, but I hope you’ll allow me to speak off the cuff here: A 50-year-old Italian man is facing fraud charges after showing up to get a COVID-19 vaccination while armed with a fake limb: a silicone arm. Che macello!
Sources say the man was found out after he began gesticulating wildly in a classically “Italian” way, just kidding — the source is La Repubblica, via the Guardian, and they say he was found out when the doctor noticed his arm was quite obviously not a part of his body.
“I felt offended as a professional,” the doctor, Filippa Bua, said. “The color of the arm made me suspicious and so I asked the man to uncover the rest of his left arm. It was well made but it wasn’t the same color.” The ruse came after Italy announced that unvaccinated individuals would be barred from most public activities — movie theaters, sporting events, gyms, and so on. And you have to hand it to this guy; he really gave his attempt at lying about being vaccinated a fair shake.
According to the Guardian, Bua noticed the arm was fake upon touching it, and noticed that it did not have veins. “I first felt sorry for the man, thinking that he had a prosthesis and wondering if I had somehow forced him to give me the wrong arm,” Bua said. “But then he admitted he was wearing the fake arm on purpose to avoid getting the vaccine.” (The Guardian notes that it is unclear whether he was wearing a whole fake arm, or a silicone layer over his skin.)
Well, who has two thumbs and one of them is fake? This guy! He really had a trick up his sleeve, didn’t he! Give him a hand! Five-finger discount! Goodnight!
