Trigger warning: could be disturbing to those who don’t realize this is bad acting.
According to the New York Times article below, this Aussie government ad promoting vaccination got some pushback. But the article, besides describing the new surge of virus in Australia, also gives some disturbing information. First, only 9% of Australia’s population is fully vaccinated. Second, you can’t get the Pfizer vaccine there unless you’re over 40; otherwise you get the less effective AstraZeneca shot.
I find the ad overly dramatic and, to me, not that effective. Better show either more gruesome shots or, as i’ve suggested, show instead the verbal testimony of real people who have lost those they loved to the virus, urging people to get vaccinated. (You could also show recovering victims still in extremis, testifying about the need for vaccination, but I think you need the hint of death for an ad like this to be effective.)
Some pushback: a tweet from a former member of Australia’s Labour Party:
Is the new Covid ad satire? Encouraging us to get vaccines with increasing conflicted advice, we don’t have enough of, we arent giving to u40’s yet & not approved for u16’s.
& those who are battling this awful disease & are already terrified of the “experimental virus” #auspol
— Emma Husar (@emma_husar) July 12, 2021
h/t: David
Do covid sufferers breathe and gasp for breath like this? Is it realistic?
Some do, and some just lie in bed and slowly die. Often however, they’re no longer covid positive when they die, but the damage is done.
The quiet ones are sedated and tubed with ventilators. So the only nerve wracking noises are the constant chirping of the alarms…
Yes, not sure that is the best idea for anti vaccine types. Maybe a heavy smoker with COPD.
I had Covid and was pretty sick (2 days in the hospital). But I had no breathing problems at all.
Something else I would add. How is it we have so many anti vaccine people today? It really makes no sense. I suspect lots of people grow up with very little parental control, hell some probably have no parents? From the time I was very little back in the 50s, my parents took us in for vaccines. There was no discussion, no arguing. You just did it and there was never a question about it. Now all of a sudden we have millions claiming all kinds of crap for not getting them. They grew up without parents or brains.
I blame Oprah Winfrey who had anti-vaxxers on her show including Andrew Wakefield and Jenny McCarthy.
I blame living the good disease free life and never witnessing people dying from a disease a vaccine can cure. My friends from India couldn’t understand anti-vaxx attitudes and eagerly signed up for every vaccine that was covered because they saw what people went through when they were not vaccinated against these illnesses. People in rich countries with access to healthcare start to think that the world was always, in its natural state, perfect for humans and they don’t have experiences with the ravages of a virus tearing through the population…when it does they sometimes panic like when there is a measles outbreak among unvaccinated children – there there are long lines for vaccination for the kids.
Even the anti-vaxx adults of today who claim they were never vaccinated are mostly talking out of their ass because most likely their parents took them to be vaccinated or they were vaccinated at school. At least, when I went to school we were all vaccinated before we were allowed to attend an no one was home schooled back then.
Exactly. People don’t know how good things are because of vaccines, because they’ve lived without the very diseases from which vaccines have protected them. It’s infuriating and frustrating. It’s a BIT analogous to the people who equate speech with violence because they’ve never dealt with actual violence in their own lives. Perhaps that’s reaching on my part.
Well, its short. Should be with more raspy & phlegmy breathing, right?
I thought this sort of scary ad is found to be effective for anti-smoking campaigns, and ads about wearing seat belts.
It’s very difficult to demonstrate retractions, jugular distension, pulmonary edema in a healthy person. The rate, her color and positioning, and her diaphoresis are appropriate. The depth of her respirations aren’t, she’s moving a lot of air. So yeah there are some details that could’ve been done better, but all in all not too bad. Anyway the Anesthesiologist is on her way in to tube this lady.
They should get the broadcasters who enable anti-vaxxers like Dick Farrel to publicise their change of heart when on their deathbeds:
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/aug/08/rightwing-radio-host-dick-farrel-anti-vaxxer-dies-covid
Ditto the dying words of politicians and officials. Scott Apley’s final text to his fiancee read, “I should have got the damn vaccine”: “GOP official dies of Covid five days after mocking vaccines” https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politics/covid-texas-gop-scott-apley-b1897325.html
I would like to see more aggressive campaigning, with these very messages being part of it. There is also a need to work directly with leaders of conservative media (Fox News, etc) to get them too g.d. pivot on this issue. They have done that before (pivot, and act like nothing has happened), and they can certainly do it now. Honestly, it would be a big help.
Darwin award…
I think antivaxx people will laugh at a commercial like that saying that it just shows more lies and propaganda. Also, I know with the gruesome images put on cigarette packages here, it just made youth laugh more at it and didn’t really stop them from smoking. I think what works is making it difficult to carry on in society with views like that. No vaccine, no problem. No public interaction. You want to smoke? No problem, but you can’t do it in restaurants, bars, in front of doors, etc. Your choice but only in so far as it doesn’t affect others.
And the backlash I can see with this – it’s vaccine scarcity time for Australians, so why freak everyone out more than they need to? I don’t know what went wrong in Australia as I thought they would be well ahead as things looked good at the start.
Australian here. Yes the vaccine rollout has been a fiasco. The federal govt signed up solely for Astra Zeneca then the blood clotting issues become publicised so there was a lot of vaccine hesitancy as a result. There is no compensation scheme for adverse reactions from AZ so basically you could die or have lifelong complications and the federal response is along the lines of “Thanks for taking one for the team for helping with herd immunity and bad luck for you”. At the time the risk of catching covid was way lower than having AZ complications.
The chief health officers then recommended that Pfizer be only for those under 50 yo and then a 53 yo died so they then changed the arbitrary cut off for Pfizer to be only available to below 60yo.
Unfortunately the govt didn’t want to spend more money on another vaccine but they had to as the population listened to the medicos. Now we have a supply issue and can’t get enough.
The govt are still refusing to allow the over 60s to get Pfizer. I think this is crazy as it takes over 3.5 months to become fully vaccinated with AZ but a few weeks with Pfizer. New South Wales esp Sydney explosion of The Delta spread is a direct result of the State government insisting that businesses can stay open and not a quick fast hard lockdown as we did in QLD and now 0 community infectious cases. So they are now in for a long long lockdown and who knows if they will ever get a hold on it. All the other states have a hard border restriction with NSW.
Of ourselves we have the usual fair share of numpties eg one twat from Sydney who didn’t believe in Covid but caught it from his wife who was hospitalised with Covid and ignored the travel restrictions and decided to inspect expensive real available in Byron Bay. He then got very sick and will not cooperate with the contact tracers to detail his exposure sites.
Honestly I despair about humanity sometimes.
I see Olympians returning to South Australia via Sydney are having to do two separate fortnights of mandatory quarantine: https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/olympics/58172665
Yes because they coming from a declared hot spot as would any other Australian coming from Sydney to the other states
Your figures are a bit out of date. As of 12 August the proportion of people over 16 who are fully vassinated is 24.4% and the percemtage with one dose is 46%.
I live in Australia and have not seen the add you mentioned on TV, but I have seem other pro vaccine ads on TV that are in no way sensational.
Yeah the federal government seemed to spend more money on ineffective advertising than they did on getting us vaccines. I’m all for a scary ad but I haven’t seen it anywhere except on sites criticising it. Our PM Scotty from Marketing doesn’t have a good track record with ad campaigns
“Our PM Scotty from Marketing”
Ha that’s excellent. Here in Canuckistan our leader is Justin, My Canadian Boyfriend.
While this ad may be a bit over the top, I think that something like this is needed to get through to the few people who will brush off a normal PSA. These films are scary for a reason, and that reason is to get your attention.