On Thursday, the Biden administration announced a new effort to encourage Americans to get vaccinated, launching a “We Can Do This” advertising campaign aimed at increasing vaccinations among the public.
The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services announced the move in a statement, saying that it was “announcing additional measures to encourage vaccinations and increase vaccine confidence” in the new part of its COVID-19 public education campaign.
The campaign will be the “COVID-19 Community Corps – a nationwide, grassroots network of local voices people know and trust to encourage Americans to get vaccinated.” The effort “will mobilize health professionals, scientists, community organizations, faith leaders, businesses, rural stakeholders, civil rights organizations, sports leagues and athletes, and Americans from all walks of life to become leaders within their own communities to help get friends, family, and neighbors vaccinated.”
It will also include “new social frames on Facebook” for Americans to be able to tell followers that they are planning to receive a vaccination. In addition to social media efforts, the campaign includes television advertisements targeted to promote vaccination within main groups of eligible individuals.
The statement reads, in part:
HHS is beginning to air both English and Spanish language TV ads across the country to encourage vaccination among key groups currently eligible to receive vaccinations, including Americans age 65 and older. In addition to general market broadcast and cable advertising, HHS has also made multi-million dollar ad buys in Black and Spanish-language media, as well as in outlets that reach AAPI and Tribal populations, to add an additional layer of outreach and messaging to hard-hit communities. The ads begin airing today, will run throughout the month of April, and will also run on digital outlets.
HHS stated, “Importantly, the ads will emphasize a message – We Can Do This – that is a hopeful and unifying call to action that we each can do our part to end this pandemic by getting vaccinated.”
Vice President Kamala Harris will be leading the new public education efforts of HHS alongside co-chairs Drs. Murthy, Francis Collins, Anthony Fauci, Marcella Nunez-Smith, and Rochelle Walensky.
Some Americans have been hesitant to get the vaccine and are wary of possible future efforts to require vaccination. The Biden administration discussed plans earlier this week detailing the potential use of vaccine passports within the private sector.
The Daily Wire reported:
A reporter asked Psaki about Biden’s position on whether businesses can tell their employees that they can’t come back to work if they have not received a vaccine or if airlines could reject people from getting on a plane if they decided they did not want to get a vaccine.
“Well, we’re going to provide guidance, just as we have, through the CDC. There’s currently an interagency process that is looking at many of the questions around vaccine verification,” Psaki said. “And that issue will touch many agencies as verification is an issue that will potentially touch many sectors of society, as you have certainly alluded to. … We expect — as Andy Slavitt, I think, alluded to — that a determination or development of a vaccine passport, or whatever you want to call it, will be driven by the private sector.”
“Ours will more be focused on guidelines that can be used as a basis,” she added. “And there are a couple key principles that we are working from. One is that there will be no centralized, universal federal vaccinations database and no federal mandate requiring everyone to obtain a single vaccination credential. Second, we want to encourage an open marketplace with a variety of private sector companies and nonprofit coalitions developing solutions. And third, we want to drive the market toward meeting public interest goals.”
Regarding the vaccination ad campaign, the Biden administration will reportedly spend over $10 million on the television ads in April alone, according to an HHS official who spoke on the condition of anonymity about the upcoming launch to The Washington Post.
New information suggests that those who have received the COVID-19 vaccination do not spread the virus to others. As reported by The Daily Wire on Thursday, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Director Dr. Rochelle Walensky said, “Our data from the CDC today suggests that vaccinated people don’t carry the virus, don’t get sick and that it’s not just in clinical trials, but it’s also in real world data.”
According to the CDC’s Vaccination Data Tracker, 30% of the total population of the United States have received at least one dose of the vaccine, while 16.9% have been fully vaccinated.