The normal now
Humans, I’ve learned a little something about you in the last week or so. I keep saying that the pandemic uncovers things that are under the surface of our society. It’s something that I probably knew already, but I’ve had such a beautiful illustration that teaches an important principle of social psychology and behavioral economics that I would like to share with you.
The principle is scarcity, whether it be real or perceived.
“When an object or resource is less readily available (e.g, due to limited quantity or time), we tend to perceive it as more valuable” (Cialdini, 2008). Now, the most obvious example of this concept during the pandemic is what happened to toilet paper last spring. But, as I have also learned, this applies to our vaccination program.
So many of my human friends are eager and anxious to get their vaccination as soon as possible. And, honestly, I want everyone to get it as soon as possible. It’s the fastest and safest way for us to achieve herd immunity and get back to some semblance of normal without more and more people getting sick or dying.
We know this. It’s good for each of us as individuals and as a society.
Yet last month, when our local hospitals received their supplies for distribution to those Category 1A healthcare workers, the response was lukewarm. About 4050% of the hospital staff signed up for the vaccine. When you look at our nursing staffs, the group is overwhelmingly majority female. Some of them had concerns around fertility and pregnancy, despite recommendations from all of the major professional organizations in the field (ACOG, SMFM, ASRM). The response was — “I think I’ll just wait.”
The hospitals wanted to do the good and responsible thing, so with under-utilization by the staff, they elected to open the vaccine program to family members of staff, especially those 65 and up, which is how my mother and in-laws got the series started.
And you know what happened? Compliance among the nurses and other staff went up. They perceived that there was potential that the hospitals would give it all away before they had a chance to get theirs and there was a flurry of activity to enroll in the program due to those fears (perceived scarcity).
The same urgency didn’t exist when it was felt that the hospital had plenty to go around.
That increased the perceived value of the vaccine, enough so that it was worth the risk. Risk versus reward — another great economic principle.
Nothing changed in the risk of the vaccine, just the perception of that risk as more people, myself included, went through the process and could tell the stories of minimal side effects. So the perceived risk decreased and perceived scarcity increased, increasing the value and therefore the demand. Supply and demand, it’s probably the first principle you learned in that high school economics class you had to take. And you didn’t know why. Yet, here it is, telling you the whole story of how humans behave.
Supply and demand, scarcity and risk versus reward.
But you’re smarter than that, aren’t you? You’re not going to fall for this kind of “limited-time offer” marketing. No, you’re going to get your vaccine because it’s the right and smart thing to do, both for yourself and for the greater good.
Now it’s up to those responsible for distribution. There hasn’t been a cohesive national or state logistical plan to get these vaccines out beyond where we are right now. But it’s coming.
President Biden released the document “National Strategy for the CoViD-19 Response and Pandemic Preparedness” yesterday, 24 hours after the inauguration. The plan is designed to get 100 million people fully vaccinated — that’s 200 million doses — in the first 100 days.
Sounds great, but that’s still only about 30% of the population. I want to see 7090%. The hope is that we will achieve that lofty target by August. Just in time for school to start back.
For the record, my family has booked a beach vacation for July. We didn’t get to do that in 2020.
Humans, I love you and enjoy studying everything about you, from the molecular level up to behavioral economics. And the more I understand you the more I love you. I want to keep you all around as long as possible. We’ve lost too many of you before the right time in the last year. We can’t get those people back.
Let’s keep moving through this tunnel toward that light.