Many decades ago, advertisers hit upon a formula for selling products: “Get ‘em sick, then get ‘em well.” First you tell the audience that they have a serious problem (“Are your neighbors laughing about your musty floors behind your back?”), then you offer your product as the solution to the problem they may not have known they had (“You’ll be the envy of the neighborhood when you start washing with Shine-o-sol!”).
The principle is alive and well in the advertising the Biden administration has unveiled as part of its campaign to persuade Americans to take coronavirus vaccines as soon as they can. The administration says: “The ‘We Can Do This’ campaign will air across cable and broadcast stations nationwide and include targeted multimillion-dollar ad buys for Black and Spanish-language media.” “In a virtual kickoff event Thursday morning, Vice President Kamala Harris and Surgeon General Vivek Murthy introduced a grass-roots network of local leaders and prominent figures billed as the ‘Covid-19 Community Corps,’ who are set to encourage shots, drawing on research that trusted voices are best able to win over vaccine-hesitant Americans.” The ad features a remix of Andreya Triana’s “It’s Gonna Be Alright” to fit in a 30-second spot. First we get 15 seconds of a plaintive piano as the singer describes a despair so many have experienced (“When the road feels endless/Don’t know where you’re strength is/It’s been so long”). That’s followed by a dramatic chord change and 15 more seconds of inspiration (“You get a call from a friend/To remind you that you’re not alone/Then you know deep down inside/It’s gonna be alright”).
The visuals tell the story: Shuttered businesses, empty streets, tired health care workers, disconnected loved ones, then shots of people happily getting the vaccine as the music swells.
You’d think this product would sell itself — and for now demand is still outstripping supply. But that won’t be true forever. We may face an extended period of cajoling and pleading as we try to persuade stragglers to take the vaccine so the pandemic can finally be behind us.
For now, politics is still hampering our ability to do so. While there has been plenty of talk about vaccine hesitancy among Black Americans, that no longer appears to be as much of an issue: A recent Kaiser Family Foundation poll finds that 17% of Black people either said they wouldn’t get the vaccine or would only do so if it were mandated, compared to 20% of White people.
Independent reporting for Pine Bluff & Jefferson County since 1879.
The starkest difference, however, is party identification: 35% of Republicans say they won’t get the vaccine or will do so only if it’s mandated, compared to just 8% of Democrats.
Meanwhile, some Republican governors have decided that the way to be a real conservative is to act as though the pandemic is pretty much over and we can all go back to normal life. Which of course increases the probability that the virus variants will take hold and the pandemic will last longer than it otherwise would.
Eventually, we could find ourselves in a situation where almost all Democrats have been vaccinated yet many Republicans haven’t. What happens then will depend on those Republicans’ reluctance fading away.
The administration is clearly worried about that moment (quite reasonably), so much of its rhetoric tries to move away from anything smacking of partisanship and toward a spirit of common purpose. Which is where Democrats are comfortable anyway: If you had to sum up their broader philosophy in one sentence, it might be “We’re all in this together.” With a few exceptions, Republicans aren’t actually telling people not to get vaccinated. But they are describing the decision not to do so as justified and perhaps even noble, an assertion of profound individual rights. You shouldn’t have to get vaccinated, you shouldn’t have to prove you’ve been vaccinated, and to quote a certain former president, one day it’s like a miracle, it will disappear.
To be clear, about half of Republicans have either already been vaccinated or plan to. But the rest of them will have to be persuaded by an appeal to the common good. That is built into much of Biden’s policy agenda, that regardless of whether you’re getting direct benefits from something such as infrastructure spending, it will make the whole country more livable and improve life for everyone.
Libertarian-leaning Republicans don’t like thinking that way, and don’t like to be asked to do something for the common good. Let’s hope they come around.
Paul Waldman is a senior writer at The American Prospect.