Georgia hospital employee compared COVID vaccine to Holocaust. Now she’s out of a job
.png "Jessica Renzi, a former employee of Wellstar Health System in Atlanta, Georgia, “is no longer employed” after posting a video on TikTok likening a COVID-19 vaccine to the Holocaust. The photo is a screengrab from TikTok user “auntkaren0’s” video.")
Sporting blue scrubs and a cap, a former employee of Wellstar Health System in Atlanta, Georgia, “is no longer employed” after posting a video on TikTok likening a COVID-19 vaccine to the Holocaust.
“I finally decided to do my part and get, you know, the little [coronavirus vaccine],” said Jessica Renzi while making a clicking noise and gun gesture with her hand. Her since deleted social media accounts said she was a surgical tech at Wellstar.
“So, I wanted to show you since we’re going to the vaccine passports and all those things,” Renzi said. “I thought I would make it so much easier and... just… go ahead and get the number tattooed on me instead.”
The video switches over to what looks like a list of numbers and letters written with a permanent marker on Renzi’s forearm. Together, it spells “go to hell.”
“Here’s my vaccine lot number. Did you get it? Isn’t it such a great idea?” Renzi said.
The fake tattoo is a nod to the identification numbers Nazis would tattoo on prisoners’ forearms in German concentration camps during the Holocaust. The original video has been deleted, along with Renzi’s account. It listed the hashtags “#patriot, #funny, #prochoice.”
McClatchy News has attempted to contact Renzi for comment.
TikTok user “auntkaren0,” who normally makes videos calling people out for being racist, posted a commentary on the original footage on Aug. 21, which has been watched nearly 900,000 times as of Tuesday.
“Comparing getting the COVID vaccine to the Holocaust is not only damaging, but it is ignorant and it is desensitizing people to what the traumatic events of the Holocaust truly were,” the user said.
A day after “auntkaren0” posted her TikTok video and notified Wellstar Health on Twitter, the nonprofit responded and said Renzi “is no longer employed.”
“While we cannot comment on the specifics of her departure, Jessica Renzi is no longer employed by Wellstar,” the tweet read. “We stand against anti-Semitism & behavior that does not serve our commitment to diversity, equity & inclusion.”
The Anti-Defamation League has also responded to the incident, according to local news outlet WSB-TV2.
“The use of Nazi and Holocaust analogies is deeply offensive, even traumatizing, especially to the families of those who perished and lost loved ones in World War II. For Jewish families, Holocaust analogies trigger fear around one of the darkest, most antisemitic times in recent history, and these present day analogies come at a time of heightened antisemitism in the US felt very clearly by American Jews,” the ADL said. “Especially as the world deals with fear around the fragility of the pandemic, invoking Holocaust analogies only functions to further distrust and anxiety, not bring us together forward.”
Renzi’s mention of COVID-19 vaccine lot numbers may be a reference to some conspiracy theories that claim the government implanted microchips inside the shots to track Americans, similar to how Nazis tattooed prisoners as a form of identification.
Coronavirus vaccine lot numbers can be found on the cards providers give recipients after getting vaccinated. The number reveals when the shot expires.
Federal health officials have said the government is not using the vaccine to track people.
“There may be trackers on the vaccine shipment boxes to protect them from theft, but there are no trackers in the vaccines themselves,” the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says. “State governments track where you got the vaccine and which kind you received using a computerized database to make sure you get all recommended doses at the right time.”
This story was originally published August 31, 2021 at 9:32 AM with the headline "Georgia hospital employee compared COVID vaccine to Holocaust. Now she’s out of a job."
