A few women and more candid young people will admit they’re afraid of needles, but how many men would fess up that needles make them cringe, inwardly if not outwardly? On surveys, fear of the jab would not put up big numbers for why the unvaccinated continue to resist inoculation, but I’m confident it is a significant reason for many people.
What if, instead of showing arm-jabbing and conveyor belts of vials ad infinitum, media took a different approach? Let’s zoom in on healthcare workers handing out and vaccine recipients applying the smiley-face stickers to their chests that say, “I got the vaccine.” Let’s show people wearing those stickers gathering with friends and family. Let’s show concert halls and restaurants with happy, confident customers. Let’s show grandparents hugging their grandkids.
There’s a place for deterrence as well. Why not take a page from the very successful campaigns of decades past to reduce smoking by linking it with cancer? Those of us old enough to recall will not soon forget those images of pale, wasted, lung-cancer patients on oxygen telling viewers in a raspy voice they wished they had quit their habits or never started in the first place. Who can forget the woman without a jaw or the former athlete with the disfigured face urging viewers to stop smoking or chewing tobacco?
There is, unfortunately, abundant video available of very ill Covid-19 patients telling their care providers they wish they had been vaccinated, perhaps even poignantly asking them for the vaccine when it is far too late. A government-sponsored public service campaign on a vast scale with those kinds of videos or photos would do more to overcome vaccination reluctance than the current menu of scolding, finger-wagging public officials and the aforesaid counterproductive video loops of needle jabs.
This approach won’t convince everyone, and of course there are many people with immunosuppressive issues and other very legitimate concerns who are being failed by numerous systems and have valid reasons for remaining unvaccinated. The misinformation and, worse, the disinformation, launched last year by Trump and his cultists, and politically ambitious governors like Abbott and DeSantis, continue to do devastating damage to our efforts to get ahead of this pandemic, but we can move closer to some kind of herd immunity, or at least minimizing the opportunity for new and more contagious or deadly variants to develop. We can accomplish a reopening of America that will actually be safe and joyous. But we have to understand our failures to communicate effectively before we can overcome the profound social and cultural impasse dividing us over vaccines.
The Covid-19 vaccines are a remarkable scientific achievement. They’re free, they work, and they’re verifiably safe, with only rare serious side-effects.
We can sell this. It’s called marketing. Let’s do it right.
Excerpted: ‘We’re Covering and Marketing Covid Vaccinations All Wrong’
Counterpunch.org
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