It’ll take more than jelly beans to win over these anti-vaxxers
Like a bank robber in a heist movie, Professor Hannah Fry heaves two bulging sacks onto a table. The gang looks expectantly as she opens one bag and showers them with . . . jelly beans.
Prof Hannah is, quite literally, a bean counter. She’s a statistician, and the mission of her life is to help us understand numbers.
Unvaccinated (BBC2) saw her gather seven people who are adamant they’re not having the Covid jab, in a bid to make them change their minds using the power of numbers. But human beans are not jelly beans. We’re all different colours, it’s true, and some are sweeter than others. There the similarities end.
Hannah had no hope of convincing people such as conspiracy theorist Luca or anxious Naomi, eager to be a mother. Their fears don’t have to be rational, because they’re rooted in emotion.
What this show needed was not a statistician but a psychologist. it’s useless to bombard people with facts and figures, while failing to address what lies beneath.
Nazarin, 21, believes the Covid vaccine will induce her to have a stroke. ‘ That terrifies me, that could happen to me,’ she sobbed.
Most healthy young people can’t imagine being struck down by brain- damaging illness. The Prof didn’t probe why Nazarin was different, but there will be a reason — a deep, emotional reason.
each anti-vaxxer around the table had their own urgent logic. Prescription drugs had made Vicky, 43, very ill. ethan, 21, had a basic Freudian fear of impotence: ‘i’d like the fella to be working,’ he said. None of them wanted to hear patronising explanations with jelly beans, as though they were primary school children who were slow to grasp a lesson.
Prof Hannah didn’t get this. She loves explaining stats in colourful, playful ways. it makes her happy. To her, numbers themselves are emotional. i’m sure it’s been that way since she was a child, when perhaps her gift for maths earned praise and affection from the people she loved most.
Ultimately, even to the statistician, facts are chiefly important because of the deep feelings they stir. As the debates became heated, the prof did a good job of keeping the angriest voices calm.
But her reliance on a superior education sometimes came across as smugness. ‘What did we get so wrong in talking about this?’ she fretted. in other words: why can’t everyone just admit that she’s right?
My own emotions are uncomplicated and blokeish: i’d prefer not to die. One doctor told the group that 95 per cent of people now seriously ill with Covid, and 100 per cent of those who don’t survive, are unvaccinated. That’s enough for me. i’ll be queuing up for my fourth dose this autumn.
Melvyn Bragg deftly cut down to the emotional roots of standup Frank Skinner’s drive to perform comedy, as The South Bank Show (Sky Arts) returned.
Frank choked up, remembering his father’s disappointment when he came home from school with a letter announcing he’d been expelled. He talked too about how his dad instilled a passion for football, telling young Frank there was ‘no point in being a man’ if he didn’t love the game. ‘it became an identity thing,’ he said.
And he revealed he prays every night: ‘There is no one i can talk to as openly as i can talk to God, without worrying about offending. He’s very forgiving, you know.’
The hour-long chat plugged Frank’s latest enthusiasm, his poetry podcast, and highlighted a lovely verse by Black Country poet Liz Berry, about pigeons, called Birmingham Roller. Frank saw himself in the pigeons. it’s all about the emotion.