Is your Team Pfizer or Team Moderna? According to the internet, this is the biggest self-identity match since Team Edward vs. Team Jacob, and it all depends on what vaccine you got.
It seems that the very unscientific masses believe that ‘girls’ of Pfizer are better. Modern ‘girls’, not so much. And if you’re a Johnson and Johnson person, or dare we say: Astra-Zeneca, we’m sorry to inform you, but you’re not even in the race. (But our science writer does have good news for the J & J crowd who are often ignored!)
It’s all nice, of course. Experts like dr. Fauci said that the best vaccine available is the one you are eligible for first, as long as it is both doses if the vaccine requires two shots. Each vaccine has been carefully tested and proven to have a high percentage of effectiveness in protecting against serious diseases and the death of the virus, which is urgently needed.
The coronavirus pandemic has so far killed more than 500,000 Americans, and community immunity through immunization is the best way to save lives, and to return to normalcy, whatever it may look like in the future.
That said, there is a reason prospective college students flock to the highest university rankings annually and why millennials still claim that their respective (and fantastic) Harry Potter Hogwarts home is the best.
People have an obsession with belonging and status and coolness, so it was only a matter of time before these impulses took hold among the vaccinated masses. Damn the pandemic, we’re always going to find a way to be part of one group that is better than another.
People on Twitter made it very clear. They share memes comparing the recipients of Pfizer vaccines with Moderna comparisons, and these can be heated in the comment threads.
Dr. Donelson R. Forsyth, a social and personality psychologist who teaches at the University of Richmond, told The Daily Beast that this behavior is consistent with a typical human behavior known as the ‘social categorization theory’.
‘We naturally place everyone we meet in psychologically composed categories, and that includes ourselves. In the classic studies on this trend, researchers would bring people into a room and divide them into two groups – completely random, “he explained in an email.” People would immediately start identifying with their own group and the people in the other group negatively. Even without ever talking to each other, people assume that they are in the ‘good group’ and that there is something wrong with the people in the other group. ‘
“We are so quick to think that it is ‘us versus them’ that we use any difference between us to create divisions: Baylor vs. Gonzaga, Morning People vs. Night Owls, Chevy drivers vs. Ford drivers, Moderna vs. Pfizer ( I will not even mention the exciting J & Js, ”he added.
But getting a vaccine is not just a friendly (or not) status symbol. It is literally about life or death. You would think that if you had enough shots to go around so that anyone who needed or wanted one could suffocate our exclusive nature, but a Notre Dame article titled The psychology of competition: a perspective on social comparison suggest that the separation actually be increased if you have fewer options.
According to the authors, “the concern compares comparisons and the competitiveness increases as the number of competitors decreases, even if the total expected payout is controlled.” In other words, the fewer competitors, such as just four types of vaccinations, the more people have the need to be the best, declaring Pfizer Diana to be Moderna Camilla meme. (Although the Modern people beg to differ.)
In some tweets, people have wondered if they are no longer compatible with their significant other or friends? Just as novice astrologers would ask if a Ram could fit into a Libra, people are now wondering if a Pfizer girl can date a Modern guy. (Pampering: It does not matter, as long as both people have grown).
Whether someone is a J&J hottie or a modern Modern woman, at the end of the day we share a common goal: slowing down the COVID distribution as our lives depend on it. Because these days they do.