Please Advise! What About My Vaccination Winnings?

[Editor’s note: Steve Burgess is an accredited spin doctor with a PhD in Centrifugal Rhetoric from the University of SASE, situated on the lovely campus of PO Box 7650, Cayman Islands. In this space he dispenses PR advice to politicians, the rich and famous, the troubled and well-heeled, the wealthy and gullible.]

Dear Dr. Steve,

Anheuser-Busch, the American brewer that produces Budweiser, has announced it will give away free beer if the nation reaches President Joe Biden’s goal of having 70 per cent of U.S. adults partially vaccinated by July 4. The NFL is offering people who get vaccinated a chance to win Super Bowl tickets. Two Ohio residents have won $1 million each in vaccination lotteries and other states like Colorado and California have vaccine lotteries too. West Virginia is also giving away guns.

What should we get?

Signed,

Thirsty

Dear Thurston,

Money, guns and the Super Bowl. Americans gonna American. No pandemic can change that.

Giving out guns to vaccinated people seems particularly apropos. Perhaps the idea is that those who get vaccinated will subsequently be missing a certain element of danger and risk in their lives.

Gun violence killed almost 20,000 Americans in 2020 and including gun suicides more than doubles that number. Not quite COVID numbers — the disease has killed over 600,000 in the U.S., over 25,000 in Canada — but a significant risk, nonetheless. A free gun might restore that edge factor people have been missing lately.

The lottery thing is brilliant too. It has long been noted that people tend to exaggerate small threats, such as those posed by vaccine side effects. Not getting vaccinated against a deadly and widespread plague on account of a miniscule chance of serious side effects is illogical. So why not harness that illogical thinking? Nothing is more irrational than planning to win the lottery, so this approach ought to be boffo with people who can’t think straight. It’s targeted marketing.

It works thematically too. After all, what is COVID if not a lottery? What is life, for that matter?

But I understand, Thirsty, that you feel left out. We in B.C. are expected to be satisfied with mere protection against debilitating or fatal disease. The government asks us to be content with life and health and does not throw in so much as a big screen TV. It’s disgraceful.

Does it not say in the Gospels: "For what shall it profit a man if he shall gain the whole world, but not even get free Super Bowl tickets?" Amen, brother.

So yes, we should get free stuff in exchange for vaccination too. But what?

Camping spots, maybe? This however might lead to a frenzy with British Columbians attempting to get vaccinated six or seven times, anything to avoid trying to get through on the phone again. And perhaps it is cruel to give false hope.

How about something involving leaf blowers? Vancouver Coun. Adriane Carr has just introduced a bill to ban leaf blowers and other gas-powered, two-stroke engine landscaping equipment. We could offer vaccinated people a chance to operate the compacter that will crush the machines, crush them into a mangled metal ball. Which will then be fired into space. Get vaccinated, and you could push the launch button.

Then again, there’s always the chance Carr’s bill won’t pass, in which case every morning at 8 a.m. we will continue to hear those hand-held Harley-Davidsons of the gardening world, burning fuel and transforming the neighbourhood into the sonic equivalent of an airport tarmac in order to push dead leaves from this spot here to that spot there. If that happens, maybe we could do like West Virginia and give away guns. Too much? Super-soakers, at least. We really ought to be allowed to fight back.

There is another possible approach — rather than incentives, disincentives. Everyone who refuses to get vaccinated will be entered into different sorts of lotteries — say, a lottery to give your neighbour a leaf blower. Maybe a Harley-Davidson with dual-leaf blowers above the tailpipes.

Those who fail to vaccinate could be given the gift of new neighbours. Perhaps these neighbours have a dog, an adorable little terrier/mole rat cross that seems to think every passing pedestrian or squirrel is wanted for murder. Dr. Steve knows of such an animal and would gladly volunteer it and its owner to be relocated.

Or perhaps your new neighbours could be crows, crows that are new parents. They are good, diligent parents. They don’t like you. You seem like a threat to their offspring. Which makes sense really, if you refuse to get vaccinated. Crows are smart that way.

Or why not the ultimate punishment? Vaccine deniers could be made to take over for Dr. Bonnie Henry for a month, thus making themselves the target of their own vaccine-denying pals. See how they like it when they have to compare themselves to Josef Mengele.

Alternatively, you could just consider your own best interests, which in this case dovetail nicely with those of society at large. That won’t get you Super Bowl tickets of course. Maybe some recently vaccinated American will take you.