Federal government fans hysteria instead of pushing positivity with new Covid-19 ad

Reason and optimism have been sidelined in favour of whipping up hysteria in the federal government’s new vaccine advertisement.

The federal government’s graphic vaccine ad featuring a young woman gasping for air is an abysmal mess.

Why whip up more fear and hysteria in a nation already riddled with fear and hysteria when other countries have successfully used positive messaging to encourage vaccinations.

Covid-19 vaccine ads from France to New Zealand are about hope and restoring freedom and normality.

The message has been to get immunised and get your old life back, but in Australia we have again opted for fearmongering.

Reason and optimism have been sidelined in favour of an ad featuring a terrified young woman writhing in a hospital bed, desperately gasping for air as she clutches her ventilator, with the message “Covid-19 can affect anyone”.

And, of course it can but it is also a virus that disproportionately impacts the very old, the very ill and the morbidly obese.

The median age of Covid-19 deaths in Australia is 86.

In other advanced nations such as the UK which has experienced far higher infection and death rates than Australia the median age of death is over 80.

The majority of deaths, both here and overseas, have been patients with multiple comorbidities.

So, it’s a little curious that the government’s ‘Grim Reaper’ style commercial, targeted for the Sydney market, features a young woman in an age group that health bureaucrats have deemed not a priority for the Pfizer vaccine (unless they are in a high risk category).

It was less than a fortnight ago that Queensland’s Chief Health Officer, and the state’s next governor, Jeannette Young told under 40s not to have the AstraZeneca vaccine.

“I don’t want an 18-year-old in Queensland dying from a clotting illness who, if they got Covid, probably wouldn’t die,” Dr Young said.

A scene from the Grim Reaper AIDS advertising campaign from the 1980s.

Talk about confused, some would say reckless, messaging from public health officials.

Add to that the media and political class who have engaged in endless hyperbole and it’s little wonder that so many Australians are ill-informed about a virus that has received intense coverage.

When research company True North asked Australians, young and old, what was their chance of dying from Covid-19 if they were infected with the Delta strain the average response was an astonishing 38 per cent.

In Australia the case fatality rate (the number of deaths divided by the number of confirmed infections) is below 3 per cent and even those aged 85 don’t have a fatality rate of 38 per cent.

Covid-19 is a dangerous virus with grave consequences for the minority whose infection is not mild or asymptomatic.

But it’s clear that almost 18 months into this crisis many Australians still see coronavirus as akin to the bubonic plague despite all available evidence on fatality rates, average age of death and number of comorbidities.

And, the federal government’s latest ad feeds on those fears and misconceptions.

Instead of providing a clear road map out of this quagmire, the same government and health bureaucracy that told us the vaccine rollout “was not a race” is using panic to motivate behaviour.

There is a better way as we have seen in a number of countries around the world with significantly better vaccination rates than Australia.