Debating merits of vaccine selfies
Posted photos promote pro-vaccination message, but also provoke anger
They first started popping up in mid-December. Right after the initial COVID-19 vaccine was approved in Canada, the first vaccine selfies inevitably appeared on social media.
Featuring mostly jubilant front-line health-care workers, this early wave rode a crescendo of emotion as the people who’ve exhausted themselves taking care of us, understandably and publicly marked reaching this sooner-than-expected milestone.
Doctors joked on Twitter about getting pumped and ready for their close-ups, while nurses and other health professionals posted beaming, thumbs-up pics on Instagram. Some captured the moment the shot was administered, like long-term-care nurse Limin Liu, above, but most showed off their Band-Aids or vaccination record cards post-jab.
Almost all were accompanied by moving captions expressing relief, hope and gratitude for the opportunity to be first in line, together with encouraging statements about the safety and the science behind these vaccines.
With thousands of these posted, the vaccine selfie instantly became a new and heartwarming photography trope, a common and visual way of immediately understanding this lightat-the-end-of-the tunnel phase of the pandemic.
A mere month later, a year in COVID time, the bloom is off the selfie amidst some critical backlash, spiralling case numbers and deaths, and a sluggish vaccine rollout.
Already tinged with notions of narcissism and self-absorption, selfies in general are often disdained when they’re perceived to be bragging or gloating. Since access to COVID-19 vaccines was limited, the fact that these celebrations could seemingly tip into this territory was perhaps unavoidable.
In a lengthy and thoughtful, Dec. 21 Twitter thread, Dr. Wendy Sue Swanson was quick to address these issues, noting, “Some of the COVID vax selfies by medical peeps feel entitled/ smug to me. Worry it may have opposite effect in a time of vaccine scarcity.”
A pediatrician, author and online thought leader in the area of child health, digital innovation and public engagement, Swanson is known for encouraging vaccine selfies for promotional and educational purposes. But previously we were dealing with “a glut of vaccine.”
Since her tweets, we’ve gone from thinking that enough vaccines were on their way to realizing that production delays and distribution mismanagement are making a scarce commodity even scarcer.
As I write this, Pfizer has already cut our vaccine shipments over the next few weeks and, according to Our World In Data, a University of Oxfordbased organization, the total number of vaccination doses administered per 100 people for Canada was just 2.41, as of Jan. 28. By comparison, it was 7.91 in the U.S., 12.33 in the U.K. and 52.64 in Israel.
Compounding this frustration, over the past few weeks, we have seen case numbers surge across the country and a terrible second wave of deaths in long-term-care facilities.
With the vaccine horizon receding for many of us, the resultant grief, fear and anxiety has hit hard during this latest lockdown, and vaccine selfies are more lately provoking bitterness and anger.
Recent images of celebrities, government officials and hospital administrators being dosed are also raising irritated eyebrows, regardless of whether they’re actually cutting the line. We know how power and privilege works and, once again, COVID-related inequities are being laid bare.
But despite this reasonable critique, there is also persuasive evidence in favour of healthcare workers continuing to post their selfies. When it comes to health communication overall, empirical studies have long demonstrated that including photographs with text can markedly increase attention and recall, as well as improve comprehension and compliance with medical advice.
And vaccination photographs, in particular, have frequently played an important health promotion role in reassuring and informing the public, most famously with Elvis Presley’s polio inoculation in 1956, organized by the New York City department of health.
That was a savvy move to combat widespread distrust back then, and similarly, we’re now trying to basically inoculate the entire world in the face of rising vaccine skepticism and refusal in many countries. The memes might make fun of anti-vaxxers, but the World Health Organization declared vaccine hesitancy as one of the top 10 global health threats in 2019.
In The Lancet that same year, a report on social media’s role in propagating vaccine misinformation quotes Heidi Larson, founder and director of the Vaccine Confidence Project at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine: “A lot of public health officials have been anxious about going into social media, especially the older generation, but that is where the public are to be found these days. We are facing this growing gap between where the scientific and official information lives and where the public is going. That has to change.”
Inadvertently or not, vaccine selfies appear to be organically heeding Larson’s call, as the majority of these photos have been posted with accompanying public-health messages.
More formal co-ordination is also happening, as with Toronto’s just opened immunization clinic at the Metro Toronto Convention Centre, which offers health-care workers “the opportunity to take an ‘immunization selfie’ with a vaccinethemed backdrop,” and branded, hashtagged Facebook picture frames to the rest of us until our turn comes around.
Given my low-risk status, I imagine it will be months before I have to decide if I should take my own vaccine selfie and if I should post it.
The complicated issues discussed here will all still apply, but as an immigrant, it will also be hard to stomach rejoicing over my vaccination when I live in the country that has bought up far more COVID-19 vaccine per capita than any other, enough to immunize our population five times over.
Canada is taking care of Canadians, I get that, but at a high moral cost to us all, and at a high personal cost to those of us born elsewhere, whose family members may not receive vaccines for years to come due to our hoarding.
Ethics requires us all to confront these problematic issues, even over something as simple as a selfie. And in the end, whatever we decide, may we stay informed, stay connected and continue to take care of each other, all the way to the end.
“Some of the COVID vax selfies by medical peeps feel entitled/smug to me. Worry it may have opposite effect in a time of vaccine scarcity.”
DR. WENDY SUE SWANSON PEDIATRICIAN