Why have so many Americans refused this particular vaccination, the CoVid19 vaccination, when vaccinations have been an acceptable rite of passage since smallpox? Polio, mumps, measles vaccinations have been administered with hardly a protest and with confidence that we would now be safe from childhood diseases. Is there more than the silly conspiracy theories that some fall prey to? Yes there is, and I call it “jab-o-phobia.”
No one wants to admit it, but the visual image of needles piercing the skin has turned many of us squeamish. Every night the media forces the image of needles biting into arms on our unwilling eyes and ramps up the fear of the jab, the penetration of a foreign object into our arms. That is not a welcome prick.
My Dad always said to avert my eyes, so I wouldn’t have to look at the needle doing its handiwork, and I took his advice willingly. When I gave blood a week ago, I turned my head away from the needle and the nurse administering it, covered it up with a gauze so I wouldn’t have to view my arm penetrated by a sharp object. The nurses know that some of us just don’t want to view our skin being punctured, even for a good cause.
The media has no such consideration. Every news story about Covid, whether its spread or its vaccination, has to be accompanied by not one, but several skin puncture images, in case we forgot what a vaccination looks like. How many such images have penetrated our eyes since the beginning of the pandemic? Someone probably knows, but I can only say it has been too many. Unlike other images of violence, the sight of needle jabbing into skin does not lose its efficacy. It continues to be cringe-worthy.
Talk about mixed messages, the media barks at us about getting the vaccination nightly, then shows us an up-close image of what it looks like in case we have forgotten. Needles digging into vulnerable skin with razor-sharp ruthlessness. Even if we know it is painless, the visual prompt makes the imagination explode.
No one is going to admit this fear, because it is the weakest rationalization possible. “You’re afraid of a needle? C’mon, you big baby! Everyone gets it!” And maybe we don’t even admit it to our conscious minds, instead forming the rationalization that it hasn’t received the FDA approval or it could be a government plot. We refuse to admit we fear the jab, so it always comes out as an adult excuse. We would rather say we fear we are being injected with an insidious microchip than that we just can’t bear the idea of a needle raping our delicate, last membrane of defense.
It’s probably too late to call off the dogs, but it might help to declare a moratorium on skin puncture images in the media. The media has always been sensitive to matters of political correctness, so this matter of jab-o-phobia ought to be registered as a vaccination deterrent.
Eliminate all images of skin punctuation! Our eyes have been assaulted long enough! Show smiling faces and soothing music when you broadcast news of CoVid-19. A few of us will be reassured, and many of us will breathe a sigh of relief when news of vaccinations is not accompanied by the ruthless puncture of our last external protection against the violence of the universe.