Serbian ‘Hermit’ Who Urged People to Get Vaccinated Says He Received Gifts From Fawning Media… and 1 EXPIRED Dose

Media fabricates a fake hermit to celebrate vaccine-taking then hangs him out to dry

Editor’s note: The dude is actually what is normally referred to as a “bum”, albeit one who has a relationship with the local media going back a decade. Here’s a Serbian media report from 2012 and another from 2013 explaining that far from a “hermit” the man is a local legend that everyone knows (he spends his summers in the town where he has a treehouse and has also built 3 small bridges), and here is a 2017 reportage explaining he often gets visitors to his wintering cave who have come from as far as the Netherlands. He freely tells anyone who will ask that Red Cross handouts and eating food people leave for him next to dumpsters are part of his survival strategy. (He also has a wild boar, but explains he won’t slaughter it for food, because then the media would no longer come by to film him.)


The photo AFP shot and used

A Serbian recluse who made international headlines after he called on people to get vaccinated has claimed he was given just one expired dose – as well as gifts from media outlets who promoted his pro-vaccine story.

Panta Petrovic, who says he lives part of the year in a cave near the Serbian town of Pirot, became an overnight sensation after media outlets applauded his pro-vaccination stance, despite his allegedly extreme “social distancing” lifestyle.

According to news agency AFP, the Serbian “hermit” was jabbed soon after Covid-19 vaccines became available in his area. “It [the virus] does not choose. It will come here to my cave too,” the 70-year-old told the outlet. He said he urged everyone to do the same and didn’t understand the “fuss” caused by global inoculation drives.

The Daily Mail, in a piece based in part on AFP’s reporting, claimed Petrovic “got jabbed as soon as Covid-19 vaccines became available.”

But the story is rather more complicated – and arguably less inspiring.

Petrovic when he is going about his business in the town (August 11, 2021)

In May, the “hermit” told Serbian media that a nearby hotel had arranged for him to get the vaccine, and also provided transportation to the clinic. By the end of the month, he had received his first dose, with local media covering the event. An AFP video report about Petrovic used the same footage of his first jab from May.

More than two months later – and after being interviewed by the agency – Petrovic has still not received his second dose. In a video posted to YouTube on August 12, the elderly man explained that he was given a shot that had expired over a month earlier. He said he felt let down because, when the time came to receive his second dose, the organizers behind his medical treatment had “vanished” and there was no one to drive him and several other villagers to the clinic. [Why didn’t the vaccine-loving AFP step in and give him a lift?]

“Politics got involved,” Petrovic claimed, while stressing that his support for the vaccine had been genuine.

Petrovic also recounted the generosity of the local and international journalists who visited him. He alleged that a Serbian news channel had gifted him a mobile phone, and that he had received “something” from other outlets that came to film him. It’s an intriguing claim, given that, in his now-viral interview with AFP, he sermonizes about the corrupting influence of money.

[Dialogue in the video (1:36):

— “You live from advertising?”
— “Not just from advertising. Everyone has to live from something. For example you journalists, you also have to live from something.”
— “Do they pay you when they film you?”
— “They give something, something is given in installments, something through the Red Cross (laughs). But there you go, I can not hide from journalists! They find me!”]

‘Hermit’ Petrovic when led around by the media

In a clear sign of the story’s popularity, billionaire and avid tweeter Elon Musk posted a meme joking about how “even Serbian hermits” understand the importance of vaccination.

But AFP may have exaggerated when it claimed that Petrovic has been “social distancing” for 20 years. In a Serbian tabloid article from 2017, he claimed to have fathered six children by five women. He said his offspring do not come to his cave because they are “afraid of snakes and other animals.” However, the “hermit” said they visit him during the summer, when he relocates to his “summer house” – a structure he built in the center of the nearby town.

Musk later deleted his meme, but only after the Serbian tabloids had delighted in the attention their national “hermit” was receiving. It’s unclear why the Tesla founder scrubbed the tweet, although some apparently interpreted it as sarcastic and “anti-vaxx.”

Source: RT

Hermit?

7 Comments
  1. ken says

    Yes,,, the unvaccinated are getting hit on all sides. Even the bums! And speaking of worthless bums….

    Mr. Screw Your Freedoms Adolf Schwarzenazi would concur with this hermit that everyone needs the kill shot much more than they need freedom. He sure as hell didn’t mind the freedom when he emigrated here in 1968. He was elected Governor twice by many of those same people he despises today.

    Of course this message is approved by the fascist infestation in governments from the federale’s to the wannabee Napoleon mayors, commissioners and health nazis.

    Like most in Hollywood that made their fortunes here in the previously free USA, they now attack the very nation and People that made it possible. Hell,,, I’m waiting for Mel Gibson who played the Patriot to come out and say the founders were White Supremacists, racist bigot sexists. He hasn’t of course but it wouldn’t surprise me at all.

    How much more of these insults and hatred American patriots can take I don’t know. It seems nothing bothers them. They just swallow the insults and continue on.

    I will be destroying every movie I have with this degenerate.

    1. Ultrafart the Brave says

      First he was the Terminator.

      Then he was the Governator.

      Then he was the Sperminator.

      Now he’s the Vaxxinator.

      Or maybe he’s just the Terminator again.

      1. ken says

        No,,, he’s an asshole…. a dumb one at that. Can you imagine the idiot as governor of commiefornia! Twice. I mean, do they just pick the dumbest of the dumb in that state… Clown Brown? Gruesome Newsom?

        1. Ultrafart the Brave says

          … the Assholinator?

          1. ken says

            There ya go!

  2. Raptar Driver says

    Stubborn Serb!

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