We need great stories to encourage vaccination. We’re not getting them
My father sold a microwave oven in 1957, when you could buy a nice car for the same price. He was pretty proud of himself.
The next week, he couldn’t wait, as the family legend goes, to visit the restaurant where it had been delivered.
He sought out the owner. “How do you like the microwave?” he asked excitedly.
“The girls love it,” the guy said. “C’mon, I’ll show you how they use it.”
They went into the kitchen, where the hulking free-standing device crouched, awaiting a slice of pie to warm up. The owner opened the big microwave’s door.
Inside, the waitresses’ purses were all neatly lined up.
This was my father’s favorite story from 40 years of selling restaurant supplies. Most of the people who heard it didn’t get the point. I’m not sure Dad did.
They just laughed at the stupidity of “the girls.” But 10 seconds of thoughtfulness should have been enough to clue them that the waitresses could not possibly be the lead actors in the failure. They would never have been allowed to use an oven which cost $10,000 in today's money for purse storage if management hadn’t gone along.
The reason for the disuse of the machine was that no one had adequately explained how to work it, nor why operating it should be safe. So everybody just continued to employ the old Salamander mini-broiler, which finished its jobs in minutes instead of seconds, but never caused any injuries more severe than third-degree burns.
I’ve been thinking lately about the 1957 tale of the shunning of the microwave because it has parallels with 2021 COVID vaccine refusals. The vaccine-hesitant wouldn’t be allowed to be stupid if government, like the restaurant owner, didn’t go along (in fear that the refuseniks would refuse to vote, too).
And government -- and the marketing industry that dominates the United States economy -- is abjectly failing at explaining vaccine safety.
You would think that American marketing mavens would be going nuts heroically creating great pro bono content promoting vaccines. But we’re seeing mostly lame efforts. If microwaves were the issue, it might be different. Because they’d be getting paid.
Both microwave ovens and COVID vaccines have been linked to infertility. Facebook has been rife with posts that say the vaccines will cause childlessness.
The vaccines had no effect on the procreation of people involved in the trials, however. There were lots of pregnancies, and healthy babies born in the plague year.
Microwave ovens don’t cause infertility, either, despite what my late wife told me. “Don’t stand in front of that thing,” she said once. “You’ll get sterilized, and then you won’t be of any use to me at all.”
Lots of troublemakers say that the vaccines might alter recipients’ DNA. That’s not happening, because the vaccines can only work on white blood cells, by confusing them into thinking they’re defending against the real thing, and thus creating antibodies.
Microwaves don’t scramble DNA either, though some folks say they do. That could happen only if people crawled inside the ovens and closed the doors behind them.
The fears of vaccines now and microwaves years ago didn’t come out of nowhere.
Consumers were already distrustful of anything employing radiation by the time microwaves started showing up in the 1950s. The government had lied to them, and been careless with various plutonium-related activities in preparation for end-of-the-world purposes.
The current vaccine fears had a head start, too. In 1998, some nutty professors published a faked study indicating vaccines for childhood diseases had caused autism. An ever-burgeoning groundswell of support for this ersatz science -- which brought back measles -- was fueled by parents desperate to believe anything caused autism other than something that could possibly be blamed on them.
They included actress Jenny McCarthy, who became more famous for anti-vaxxing than anything else she had done, with the possible exception of posing for pictures without any clothes on.
She became the face of a movement that lost its steam in 2010 when the witch doctors’ study was officially driven from the Lancet. But McCarthy never relented, and neither did some other stubborn followers. So they were ready to form the core of a new anti-vax movement, which opposed different vaccines for entirely different reasons. A nonsensical movement about freedom from life-saving vaccines got off the ground worldwide.
It snowballed, fed by Republican politicians who exploited it. They pound away on threats to personal freedom, no matter how ridiculous, because they have lost the high ground on all the significant issues.
Now, suddenly, in the face of a new COVID surge, GOP leaders and thought-merchants are coming around, weakly suggesting their fans get vaccinated (They can’t be too enthusiastic yet, considering past performance).
It will be hard to convince the hesitant to get shots after trying to convince them not to for months. It’s like with microwaves: there are still people who worry about them from scares of decades ago, despite assurances.
But today, thanks to lower prices and marketing, microwaves are in 90% of American homes. This is despite the fact that most people don’t know how to use them without robbing the food of most of its nutrition.
The vaccines have always been halfway to that level of acceptance: they’re not only affordable, they’re free. But the marketing effort is pitifully meager, considering this is a product we need to be adopted almost universally.
The message should be everywhere.
We should employ ad campaigns to encourage shots for people who want to consort romantically. No shootie, no bootie.
It’s not happening.
We should also be heavily marketing the concept of vaccination passes. Even if it never happens, it could scare refuseniks into changing their minds.
The idea of passes is catching on, but it’s growing piecemeal in the private sector, not compelled by government.
France recently started doing it by mandate, but President Emmanuel Macron has backed off, as he dislikes being called “Hitler” by 100,000 people parading through Paris.
One of the things the French may have done wrong was assessing fines for non-compliance. If you charge people, they’ll think you’re less interested in public health than in revenue generation. You’re just adding another big issue to tick people off.
I don’t expect President Biden to institute a vaccine passport under any circumstances. He doesn't want to risk being called Hitler, either. That might screw up the mid-terms.
So should we wait for private business to do it little by little? After all, if Lollapalooza can put its foot down, anyone can.
But it’s not catching on fast. Most of the baseball stadiums, for instance, have opened their doors wide with no questions asked. While some places are cracking down, business is, mostly, just business.
The ball clubs aren’t even using modern marketing to push fans toward vaccinations. They’ve got captive audiences of 30,000 people, but they couldn’t be bothered with tough vaccination arm-twisting. They’d rather have fans die than offend them.
In this country, we’re good at changing minds through fiction, in movies and on TV. But the compelling stories about unnecessary deaths of young, attractive, anti-vaxxers that we need are nowhere to be seen. Where is “The Fault In Our Stars” that will tell the COVID vaccine tale?
We can rush vaccines into production, but not cool stories about them.
It’s ironic that millions might die because Hollywood, and American marketers, didn't get off the dime.
We’re telling each other about how to survive with Twitter, Facebook and Instagram posts, the laziest way possible. They’re the microwaves of storytelling.
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