Pop-music icon Madonna's hospitalization over the weekend has catalyzed a ripple of conspiratorial claims across social media, linking the singer's illness to COVID-19 vaccines, only hours after the news was announced.
Madonna's manager, Guy Oseary, confirmed on Wednesday via Instagram that the pop star had "developed a serious bacterial infection which led to a several day stay in the ICU."
Madonna remains under medical care but is expected to make a full recovery, Oseary said, without giving any further details about the singer's illness.
It's not yet known the extent to which her hospitalization will affect the recently announced new tour, Celebration, marking her 40-year career in music. However, Oseary has said: "At this time we will need to pause all commitments, which includes the tour."
While little else is known about Madonna's health beyond Oseary's announcement, numerous social media posts have drawn a link between the 64-year-old singer and the COVID-19 vaccine.
Among the most popular posts was by a conspiracy theorist who goes by the name of Dom Lucre, who tweeted on June 29, 2023, that there were "reports" saying that the hospitalization was "vaccine related".
It's not clear which "reports" Lucre is referring to here, with no bona fide articles or evidence to support that conclusion.
We don't know what kind of bacterial infection Madonna was hospitalized for but there is no evidence that bacterial infections rank among reported side effects of COVID-19 vaccination.
Among the list of adverse events that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has investigated, bacterial infections are not among them. While a number of conditions that have in rare cases been linked to the vaccine (such as thrombosis) may be caused by a bacterial infection, bacterial infection alone is not listed as an adverse effect.
COVID infections, however, have been associated with bacterial coinfections. A 2023 study published in Influenza and other respiratory viruses found that among 36,490 adults hospitalized with COVID-19, six percent were identified as having bacterial coinfections.
Research by the University of Alabama at Birmingham, which investigated 13,871 COVID-19 inpatient encounters from 2020-2022 also found that bacterial coinfection in the blood is a greater risk factor for death, intensive care unit admission, and mechanical ventilation than other risk factors such as age, sex or other co-morbidities.
Another tweet by user @DiedSuddenly_, posted on June 29, 2023, viewed one million times, also included a video of Madonna saying that she had taken the Moderna vaccine "two times".
The tweet stated: "Madonna confirmed had 2 doses of the Moderna Vaccines 💉
"She was hospitalized early this week and intubated.
"Madonna has also openly supported mandated vaccinations."
The video, however, was part of promotional material for the singer's 2019/20 Madame X tour. While we don't know whether or when Madonna received a vaccine since that tour, the lack of context in tweets like this may create the impression the video was filmed recently, which it wasn't.
Furthermore, even if Madonna had received a vaccine recently, side effects are seen within hours or days of injection, meaning that even in the unlikely event that her current condition was caused by a vaccine-related side effect, she would have had to have received that vaccine within the past month or so.
Madonna herself has previously been accused of spreading conspiratorial claims related to COVID-19. In 2020 she praised Stella Immanuel of America's Frontline Doctors, who said masks weren't necessary to stop the spread of COVID and promoted the use of hydroxychloroquine, a drug widely discredited as a treatment for the disease.
Social media posts that the singer shared praising Immanuel were later deleted.
In 2021, she also argued that there was "no debate or discussion" over vaccines due to "cancel culture."
"The way people think about the pandemic, for instance, that the vaccination is the only answer or the polarization of thinking you're either on this side or the other," she said.
"There's no debate, there's no discussion.
"No one's allowed to speak their mind right now.
"No one's allowed to say what they really think about things for fear of being canceled, cancel culture. In cancel culture, disturbing the peace is probably an act of treason."
The singer did, however, donate $1 million to the Gates Philanthropy Partners' COVID-19 Therapeutics Accelerator in 2020 toward vaccine development, a contribution which evidently provoked the anti-vaccine conspiracy theorists.
In a statement on her website from April 2020, she wrote: "I'm joining the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation effort to find a drug that will prevent or treat COVID-19.
"We need this to protect our health workers, the most vulnerable, and all of our friends and families."
Newsweek has contacted a representative for Madonna via email for comment.
