Vaccine Humor

Poll: "For adults under age 65 who are vaccine-hesitant, reluctance is mainly driven by concerns about safety, side effects and distrust in government."

            Wendy King, Delphi Group, Carnegie Mellon University

A coincidence of timing. A college classmate sent me the joke comment that starts this blog post. I laughed and sent it to a few people.

It arrived by email just after I got off the phone with a former colleague from my Morgan Stanley financial advisory practice who told me that he and his wife were not getting vaccinated for COVID. That surprised me. He and his wife are educated, civic-minded, and in their 70s. They are also White, Republican, and Christian. He said,

 I'll let the government experiment on a hundred million other people first. No one knows what's in those vaccines. There could be side effects and bad long term consequences from the COVID itself or the trace ingredients. 

Just for fun I decided to see what's in a McDonalds Chicken McNugget.  

Ingredients: White Boneless Chicken, Water, Vegetable Oil (canola Oil, Corn Oil, Soybean Oil, Hydrogenated Soybean Oil), Enriched Flour (bleached Wheat Flour, Niacin, Reduced Iron, Thiamine Mononitrate, Riboflavin, Folic Acid), Bleached Wheat Flour, Yellow Corn Flour, Vegetable Starch (modified Corn, Wheat, Rice, Pea, Corn), Salt, Leavening (baking Soda, Sodium Aluminum Phosphate, Sodium Acid Pyrophosphate, Calcium Lactate, Monocalcium Phosphate), Spices, Yeast Extract, Lemon Juice Solids, Dextrose, Natural Flavors.

America's favorite hot dog brand is Ball Park Franks. The brand edges out Oscar Meyer in sales.  

Ingredients: Mechanically Separated Chicken, Pork, Water, Corn Syrup, Potassium Lactate, Contains 2% Or Less: Salt, Sodium Phosphate, Natural Flavor, Beef Stock, Sodium Diacetate, Sodium Erythorbate, Maltodextrin, Paprika Extract, Sodium Nitrite.

Readers may have heard of Sodium Erythorbate --C6 H7 NaO6. It is a food additive, the sodium salt of erythorbic acid. There is an urban myth circulating that it is ground-up earthworms, an idea fueled by a name that is seems to include the words earthworms plus bait. This is untrue but it gets around because the idea triggers a sense of disgust combined with distrust of corporations. That makes the rumor "clickable" and good for passing along as warnings on Twitter and Facebook. Sodum Erythorbate is made from beets and corn.

The ingredients joke gets its humor from the implausibility that fear of unknown substances are the deep-down reason for widespread vaccine hesitancy among many Republicans. From masks to vaccines, COVID responses have become a partisan political marker. Many Republicans are looking for reasons not to go along with something they think is possibly or mostly a matter of Democratic over-reach and political signaling. The joke is just a bit of "gotcha" on the left.

It is the equivalent of the sly jibe I published a week ago, teasing Democrats for being too committed to regulations and shutdowns, long after they are necessary, i.e. alone outside in a park. Also funny. Also "gotcha."

Donald Trump was so polarizing a figure that he created over-reactions which become easy targets for humor. Republican voters don't take the vaccine; Democrats misread the public mood and are maintaining COVID regulations past the point the public thinks appropriate. There are consequences. A few extra Republicans will get sick and die. A few extra Democratic officeholders will lose the next election.

Hint to both Democrats and Republicans: when people are passing around jokes about you--jokes that seem on-point even to people who tend to agree with you--it is time to question your policies.

[NOTE: Tomorrow: The new Democratic strategy recommendation. Stop trying to encourage Republicans to get vaccinated. It is backfiring. Instead, change vaccinations to a GOTV-program, Get Out The Vaccine, and focus on getting Democrats vaccinated. Move vaccine supplies from the rural areas where they are not being used back to the cities. See how Republicans respond then.]