Going Mainstream by Julia Ebner

Author:Julia Ebner
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: ITHAKA

PERSUADING THE MASSES

Once politically significant parts of the population start believing in the ideas that originated in deviant subcultures, the mainstreaming process is complete.

‘So you are convinced by the Pfizer vaccine?’ the nurse asks me.

I must have looked slightly confused. I didn’t expect the question at Vienna’s main Covid vaccination centre. I am on an extended family visit and have decided to get the vaccine now rather than wait for my appointment in London. I’m hoping to pass some immunity on to my little baby while still breastfeeding.

‘Well, I wouldn’t be here otherwise, would I?’

‘I guess so,’ she says in an unimpressed voice. ‘Most people come here voluntarily. Others are dragged here by their partners or friends.’

I can’t think of a good enough reply and just nod. Covid vaccine hesitancy is so common across Europe and the US that plateauing vaccination rates prolonged lockdowns in many countries. A Financial Times investigation found that German-speaking countries have the highest shares of unvaccinated people in Western Europe. A few percentage points ahead of Switzerland and Germany, Austria leads the anti-vaxxer ranks. By the start of 2022, over a third of the country’s population were still unprotected against Covid-19.280

The nurse inserts the needle into my arm as soon as I sit down. She is precise and unhesitating, and it doesn’t hurt. I am so relieved to finally have my first jab that I wouldn’t have cared even if it had. But as I stood in the waiting area a few minutes later, watching the clock let the recommended fifteen-minute wait pass, the nurse’s words echo in my head.

A few days earlier, I had been on the phone with a friend who told me she wouldn’t get the vaccine. ‘I’m not going to risk becoming infertile. Have you heard of the cycle changes the vaccine causes?’

I listened without interrupting as she spoke without pausing to breathe. ‘We don’t know anything about the long-term side effects on our body. What if the vaccines cause cancer, what if we all die in a few years? Besides, who knows whether they will even work?’

I can’t blame her. I used to be a massive hypochondriac myself. Things came to a head when I moved to Beijing for a year. Being exposed to unregulated chemicals, dangerous levels of air pollution and repeated food poisonings initially turned me into a nervous wreck. As time went by, however, the grip of hypochondria softened. As you can imagine, my life improved dramatically.

My hypochondriac self was never rational. It simply didn’t care about statistics or probabilities. Instead, it created the scariest possible scenario and mentally replayed it over and over again. In 2018, I travelled to speak at a conference hosted by NATO in Minsk. After reading the UK travel advice for Belarus, which warned of contaminated village well water and the long-term effects of the Chernobyl disaster in some areas of the country, I bought only imported bottles of water and didn’t eat anything for the entire two-day conference. We were staying

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