The World Economic Forum has come out with an advice for vaccination drive in areas where people have started questioning the need for the vaccination, and the efficacy and safety of the vaccines. This is written for the heads of states to formulate their policies. This has come in the form of an article named “3 Tactics to Overcome COVID 19 Vaccine Hesitancy” 1 written by Rohit Deshpande, Professor of Marketing in Harvard Business School, Ofer Mintz, Associate Head of Marketing, University of Tehnology, Sydney and Imran S Currim, Professor of Marketing, in the University of California, Irvine.
The WEF has posted it prominently in their website and yet absolved itself from responsibility of its content by saying that – “The views expressed in this article are those of the author alone and not the World Economic Forum.” This act of absolving itself of responsibility smells of a cheap cunning.
However, let us examine the article itself. The first question that came to my mind when I saw this article is why, would three marketing experts be needed to sell to the people what is being touted as science? Has the same been done to promote the control of Malaria, Tuberculosis, Dengue, Diarrheal Diseases, or other respiratory diseases? The answer is no. So why now? Why for an infection, for which the thumb rule has become that 85% of the infected do not get the disease, 10% get mild to moderate disease, and only 5 % get a severe disease? I will leave this question for the readers to answer themselves.
The authors have identified the three problems of vaccine hesitancy, procrastination and rejection as the obstacles to the vaccination of 60-70% of the world population. To overcome the three problems they have relied on ‘marketing knowledge’, which tells them that people first thinks about doing anything (like buying, which is the only doing that these three marketing experts understand), then feels about the doing, and then actually performs the act of doing. I congratulate them on such great knowledge! So few people have it, it seems!
After ‘identifying’ such problems, they have come to solutions, following the example of the US, by their own admission. And what are the solutions?
‘Educate’ (!) people through phone calls, direct mails, television, billboards(!) and digital channel. – This is advertising in the name of education.
Use community leaders, preachers, people with ‘medical expertise’ (aren’t the actual clinicians responding anymore?) – Appealing to peoples’ emotions instead of presenting scientific facts.
More assertive approaches” like “having medical sources directly refute” what they call “inaccurate claims” – If you can have someone refute something, then you are coercing him to do the refutation.
“Training and funding” is needed “to help medical, public health, and non-profit organisations actively respond to” what they call “misinformation”. This is gross corruption in place of scientific dialogue.
They want to engage “medical providers, (again not clinicians) political and faith-based leaders to provide ‘think’-based knowledge about medical decisions”
They want to base their actions on their knowledge that people are more “likely to rely on their communities to provide the ‘feel’ or emotion-based conviction for decisions”.
The above two points are appealing to the emotions of people instead of providing hard scientific evidences.
“Another way to improve vaccine sceptics’ feelings is to play into a fear of missing out (FOMO), both socially and economically” – Promoting coercion.
These marketing gurus are promoting cash incentives, free transportation, lotteries and large block parties to incentivise vaccinations, by their own admission in the article. They also go on to say that, “Businesses should also be encouraged to contribute by providing paid time-off, free products and lottery giveaways” – Using gross corruption to promote their agenda of vaccination.
They have suggested “vaccine swat teams” and “proactive micro-vaccination sites tailored for the vaccine-hesitant, procrastinators, and rejectors”. In the United States, a SWAT (special weapons and tactics) team is generic term for a law enforcement unit that uses specialized or military equipment and tactics2. So, a SWAT tactic for vaccination means arm twisting and direct coercion to vaccinate.
On extracting the essence of the 3 tactics from the jungle of jargon of the marketing experts, we get that the tactics that are prescribed by the World Economic Forum for mass vaccination drive by the states, are –
Collusion
Corruption
Coercion
It is now for the people to decide how they will react to these tactics.
References:
https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2021/06/3-tactics-to-overcome-covid-19-vaccine-hesitancy/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SWAT
