(Image: Private Media/Mitchell Squire)

Australia’s ad-driven media are, predictably, excited that they’ve finally convinced the government to pay for advertising to push the COVID-19 vaccine. Money in the bank to do a public good. Good news all round.

The hope? The military metaphors — just a little bit “boys-own” — of the “Arm yourself against COVID-19” campaign, together with a more disciplined (and less politically self-interested) messaging out of the federal government, will nudge enough Australians to take advantage of the army sorting out logistics and big pharma coming through.

Hey presto! Australia surges to an 80% vaccinated adult population in that long-sought dream of post-pandemic herd immunity sometime between November and January (and certainly ahead of the 2022 federal election).

The fear? “Nudge” — the behavioural economics tool of choice of policy makers eager to shape our behaviour in our own good — just won’t cut it this time around, whatever the quality of advertising.

The risk? That enough political and media voices decide to throw in the towel, shrugging, “Well, we tried.” (Exhibit A: the “close enough is good enough” lock-down minimalists in the NSW cabinet.)

So far, the challenge has been “too many arms, not enough needles” (or in Morrison-speak, “You have to get a jab, to have a jab”). Sorting out logistics and supply brings a risk of flipping that problem around: vaccine hesitancy could see Australia with more needles than arms with sleeves rolled up, ready to go.

In countries with a better rollout than ours (and, as we know, that’s a lot), a once surging vaccine take-up is now flattening out around 60% of adults for the first shot, leaving about a third of adults unvaccinated (and half without the second dose).

Vaccine take-up is hitting the limits of “nudge theory”, the behavioural economics idea popularised by Chicago economist Richard Thaler and Obama adviser Cass Sunstein, which posits that an integrated campaign of positive cues and suggestions can break through resistance to otherwise complex personal decisions and actions.

In May, US President Joe Biden sought to nudge up the vaccination growth with a “do it for the nation” target of 70% of adults with one shot by July 4. Seemed easy at the time, but it fell short on both counts.

Politically speaking, both the US and the UK find themselves in the middle-of-the-road trap: not enough people vaccinated to stop the Delta variant, too many to sustain public support for the lockdowns needed to slow the spread.

Like Australia, the US and UK have a structural comorbidity restraining action: a right-wing media eager to play politics. News Corp’s Australian media have moved on from undermining state-based lockdowns to encouraging complacency with a narrative of anti-government haters. (“They don’t just hate the government, they hate you too, the quiet Australian,” according to Sky’s Paul Murray in the first week of NSW’s lockdown.)

In the US, sister channel Fox News has already taken the next step, moving on from “just asking questions” about vaccines to full-on anti-vaxxer talking points. Expect these to bleed into Australian discourse, sooner rather than later.

The Pfizer-vaccinated Morrison has proven a poor salesman of AstraZeneca. Once intended as the “workhorse” of Australia’s rollout, it’s now proof of the axiom that you only get one chance to make a first impression.

There’s plenty of critics of Australia’s latest advertising campaigns (and the “arm yourself” tagline leaves a lot to criticise). Ideas about how to do better are already driving this week’s news cycle (as on yesterday’s Insiders). But any campaign is going to find itself sailing against the winds of inaction.

Behavioural economists call it the “default effect” — the tendency, given the chance, for us to take the “do nothing” option (it’s why, for example, we accept Facebook’s default terms and conditions so readily).

Lockdown leans into the default effect, asking that you literally do nothing but stay at home! It works, although as south-western Sydney demonstrates, it demands an understanding of diverse cultural lifestyles.

Vaccination demands both decision and action. Experience shows you can nudge people only so far before sooner or later they’ll need some real compulsion — vaccination as the default to work, to travel, to play — if Australia is to live in the virus’ world.