Manipulating You to Take Their Vaccines

Flu Lab

Flu Lab has a singular mission – to fuel bold approaches to defeat influenza. To achieve this Flu Lab seeks out high-impact opportunities, makes investments and grants, evaluates results, and provides opportunities for shared learnings. Flu Lab is privately funded.

Awarded Grants & Ventures

Among the many grants awarded by Flu Lab is the “The University of Pennsylvania Behavior Change for Good Initiative” which is leveraging the expertise of over 100 behavioral scientists to identify effective, scalable interventions for promoting immunizations.

https://theflulab.org/grants-ventures

BCFG Teams up With Walmart to Guilt You Into Vaccination

“Telling a person the flu shot is ‘reserved for you’ suggests that this particular dose of the vaccine already belongs to them, and if they don’t claim it, they’ll actually be losing something,” said Buttenheim. “So it invokes loss aversion, as well as a sense of reciprocity – the provider has gone to the trouble of setting aside the vaccine dose, and it would be rude not to take it. Gretchen was also eager to frame getting the flu shot as a default: the flu shot is waiting for you.”

BCFG hopes these strategies for designing low-cost and scalable nudges will support COVID-19 vaccination efforts and help curb the spread of this devastating virus.

https://news.wharton.upenn.edu/press-releases/2021/02/the-university-of-pennsylvanias-behavior-change-for-good-initiative-unveils-effective-strategies-to-boost-vaccination-rates/

“Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience. They may be more likely to go to Heaven yet at the same time likelier to make a Hell of earth. This very kindness stings with intolerable insult. To be "cured" against one's will and cured of states which we may not regard as disease is to be put on a level of those who have not yet reached the age of reason or those who never will; to be classed with infants, imbeciles, and domestic animals.”

― C.S. Lewis, God in the Dock: Essays on Theology