Social media users -- and even some news reports -- are misrepresenting precautions put in place by Make-A-Wish Foundation to protect the children and families they serve from coronavirus.
Popular social media posts are falsely suggesting the Make-A-Wish Foundation refused to grant a wish to an unvaccinated cancer patient.
This is untrue. A four-year-old cancer patient requested a wish to go to Mickey Mouse’s house at Disney World. Make-A-Wish asked the family to choose something safer for the child, because the foundation’s vaccine policy does not currently allow unvaccinated participants to travel by air or attend large gatherings.
The child’s mother posted to Facebook that Make-A-Wish refused to give the child his wish, without including the information that wishes that did not include air travel were offered instead for safety reasons.
Make-A-Wish responded with a statement that it “has not, does not and will not deny wishes to children who are not vaccinated.”
Claims about sick children are particularly likely to capture attention and spread widely on social media, even if they aren’t true, because they are emotional and contain a moral message, according to Lisa Fazio, a Vanderbilt University psychology professor who studies how false claims spread.
Here are the facts:
CLAIM: The Make-A-Wish Foundation denied a 4-year-old cancer patient a wish because he was unvaccinated.
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