You do the mask and vax, and put the freshness back
The title here is a reference to another disturbing advert that appeared in the eighties with the slogan “you do the shake n’ vac, and put the freshness back”. When I was searching for an appropriate image I saw this ghastly slogan had been resurrected (or maybe it never went away) with Jedward putting their hearts and haircuts behind the product.
The idea behind this product, called “Shake n’ Vac”, is that before you start vacuuming your carpet, you make things worse by liberally sprinkling some fragrant white powder all over it. Then, you vacuum. Never having used this product I obviously have seriously unfresh carpets - but there you have it - the wonders of modern marketing. People actually bought this stuff.
The Covid marketing campaign has been spectacularly successful. It, too, has been designed to make us all desperate for things that are bloody useless and unnecessary and more about image than anything else. Things like masks, for example.
There has been no less of a marketing effort applied to the vaccines too. It would be fine if it had stayed at the “please get vaccinated” level, but it hasn’t. It has strayed into territory every bit as disturbing as Shake n’ Vac.
If you’re not seriously disturbed by this still from a US talk show, which was meant to be a light-hearted effort to promote the vaccines by having people sing and dance in hypodermic needle costumes, I think you should probably be wearing a hockey mask and have a taste for drinking fine Chianti. Please, please, do not attempt to watch the full clips of this - you will never recover from the experience.
This weird cultish behaviour surrounding the covid vaccines is certainly ridicule-worthy and disturbing in a kind of “OMG people have really lost the plot” way, but other aspects of the vaccine marketing have been disturbing in a much darker way.
I don’t really have the language to express my absolute disgust at ads like these. They are an abhorrence, straight from the fetid bowels of some deranged and perverted entities. So much evil in only 8 words.
In a nutshell, it exhorts parents to get their kids vaccinated, not for the benefit of the kids themselves, but for the benefit of others. Thankfully, my kids are grown up and can make their own decisions, but I know what my responses would have been. Come near my kids with that needle and I’ll break your fucking arm being amongst the most printable of them.
Now, I’m all in favour of something that protects kids and if it happens to have the additional benefit of protecting others then that’s awesome, but protecting others would be wholly irrelevant as a factor in my decision where kids are concerned.
If this ghoulish notion that adults should use their own kids to protect others isn’t enough, look at the blame that is implicit here. Jemima, you naughty girl, you killed Granny. No iPad for at least a week. Sure, you might want to delay that visit to Granny if Tarquin has a cold, but you don’t tell your little bundle of joy the reason is that he might kill Granny - unless you actually want him to grow up with a whole raft of personality disorders and psychoses.
This notion, that we need to protect others when applied to the vaccines, has spilled out into some quite disturbing opinion (disturbing for 2019, but not perhaps so disturbing in these more “enlightened” times of 2022).
Let’s ignore the fact that Kate isn’t quite up to date with the science - what she thinks of as “the science” is a somewhat partial and cherry-picked sub-set (which also happens to be bollocks, but let’s ignore that too). What we need to focus on is the self-congratulatory statement that she did her bit (outlined in red) - and the amazing presumption she has in taking it upon herself to teach those jolly selfish antivaxxers a damn good lesson.
OK, she has a pretty risible understanding of risk, and especially after a couple of years of mind-numbing propaganda I can forgive her fears. But what is unforgiveable is the desire to force her opinions on another in this manner. Who the hell does she think she is? Have them round, don’t have them round, but to use it as a “teaching” experience like this?
Not that I would ever get an invite to Kate’s house, but it would be futile. I tend to avoid supercilious wankers if at all possible.
But Kate’s paranoia-induced moralizing vanishes like covid-laced breath on a windy day when compared to the attitude expressed in this tweet.
If these kinds of attitudes to the health choices of others persist, we’re heading for some very serious trouble down the road. This wedge that has been driven in society has been wholly deliberate. It’s no accident at all. The propagandists have encouraged this division perhaps in the misguided belief it will increase the take-up of the vax, but perhaps for other purposes too. Who knows the full motivations behind it?
The only thing I know for certain is that it is no accident these deeply disturbing views have arisen. We need some kind of “Shake n’ Vac” for society - something to put the freshness back.
Dear Kyla in the Burgh,
You may not have to worry about your organs going to the unvaccinated OR the vaccinated. Transplant surgeons are finding a disturbing number of vaccinated donor patients' organs to be full of spikey-spikies, and the only thing the medical team can do with them is toss them in the trash.
I do hope this makes you feel better.
Sincerely,
Someone whose organs aren't full of spikey-spikies.
Ok, Rudolph, "We Need to Talk about Lead-Ins". I don't remember Shake and Vac -- (Jedward, yes, also, unfortunately, that syringe dance, on Twitter), but the connection of Shake and Vac to the rest of the article is "laboured", to be generous. As for the "othering" of the "anti-vaxxers", your good friend Eugyppius made an excellent point that we all need outgroups to hate -- in fact, that's how we in part define ourselves (in my case, and probably yours, the outgroup is 99% of population). But there is something deep-seated about this hatred that of course has nothing to do with health. These women like Kate, when they lash out at "anti-vaxxers", do not think of the rather large proportion of ethnic minorities who have not been vaxed as part of the hated group, but rather, they sense, with some justification, that the rest of us think we're the Chosen People (the parallel is intentional). Our refusal threatens them. Perhaps some of them, if not Kate, dimly recognise they've been sold a bill of goods with the vax and, by engaging in this kind of very public shaming, they are warning us against a massive "I told you so!" from the purebloods in a few years' time.