FOMO could be the cure for vaccine hesitancy

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 20/08/2021 (1855 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Earlier this month, New York City became the first major American city to require proof of vaccination for a host of indoor activities, including working out in a gym, dining at a restaurant or attending a concert or cultural performance. The mandate takes effect in September.

In Quebec, vaccine passports will be implemented as of Sept. 1, allowing only fully vaccinated people to access music festivals, bars, restaurants and gyms. And last week, Canada issued a vaccine mandate for air, rail and marine travellers, as well as for public servants.

With all of this news, I’ve been thinking a lot about how vaccine mandates tap into a social anxiety known as FOMO, or the fear of missing out. Turns out, I’m not alone.

“Given the impending crisis, policymakers are raising the stakes by using the threat of exclusion to tap into a primal fear — FOMO — that is deeply imprinted on our collective psyche,” writes Patrick J. McGinnis in an op-ed on New York City’s strategy for NBC News. McGinnis would know; he literally wrote the book on the subject: Fear of Missing Out: Practical Decision-Making in a World of Overwhelming Choice.

As McGinnis lays out, FOMO can be overwhelmingly powerful; it’s why Instagram makes you feel bad. It’s that “everyone is hanging out without me” pang you feel when, well, everyone is hanging out without you — or just seems like they are.

But is FOMO really going to be what convinces people to get vaccinated? Not risk of illness or death, not a lottery, but… FOMO?

In many ways, that absolutely tracks. It’s human nature; FOMO, as McGinnis writes, is hard-wired. We are social creatures who don’t want to be excluded — our survival depends on it. There’s a reason, as I’ve recently written, that vaccine and pandemic slogan T-shirts make reference to teams (Team Pfizer) or clubs (Social Distance Club): we want to belong.

We use the words “family” and “team” to describe workplaces; outside of our families, we find community in schools, fandoms, organized sports. Entire cultish groups have formed around, for reasons not entirely clear to me, various forms of stationary biking (SoulCycle, Peloton). Also, actual cults, one supposes. The point is, humans have as basic a need for social connection as they do for air or water.

That’s why the isolation of the pandemic-related lockdowns, physical distancing, and stay-at-home orders cratered so many people’s mental health; it doesn’t come naturally to us. And while it’s true many of our social interactions were migrated online pre-pandemic, having the option to meet someone face-to-face still existed — especially when it really counted. Not being able to celebrate together, to grieve together, to hold someone you love when they need you most, has been the hardest part of all of this.

Besides, spending all that time alone bathed in the glow of a blue screen has always been a poor replacement for actual socializing. Social media has served as an accelerant for FOMO. In the Before Times, seeing social-media dispatches from concerts, parties, festivals, sporting events, restaurants, cabins, beaches, international vacations — anywhere you were not, really — inflicted a specific kind of sting, especially since the Infinite Scroll makes it feel as though everyone is living their best life simultaneously.

Sure, it hurt to hear about Friday night’s party at school on Monday morning — yes, I remember a time before the Internet — but experiencing the missing-out part in real time via Instagram Stories really smarts.

Still, while the loneliness of the pandemic was certainly difficult for people, it did offer a bit of a reprieve from FOMO. FOMO isn’t really a thing in lockdown. Everyone was missing out which meant no one was missing out. I think that’s why people bristled about those who elected to break the rules to have, say, Christmas anyway; sure, it contravened public health orders, but it also felt acutely like exclusion.

Now, FOMO is back, only this time, it’s coupled with the added pressure to make up for lost time, lost memories, lost celebrations.

If being unvaccinated means missing out on the things that make life worth living — and having to watch vaccinated people move on with their lives from the sidelines — perhaps that’s motivation enough to make an appointment.

So long as there are privileges hinged on vaccines, that is. (Allow me to state, for the record, again, that ‘not dying from COVID-19’ or ‘not overwhelming hospitals’ seem like excellent incentives to get the jab, but hey, here we are.) Unlike New York or Quebec, Manitoba’s vaccination cards have been effectively kneecapped by the province’s baffling decision earlier this month to open up bars, restaurants, gyms, movie theatres, galleries and museums to unvaccinated people, which means we may never get to see the motivating power of FOMO in practice in this province.

That said, unvaccinated folks may still find themselves on the outs even without formal vaccine mandates. People will start making their own. Get used to seeing “must be fully vaccinated” on social invitations.

jen.zoratti@freepress.mb.ca

Twitter: @JenZoratti