Britain’s National Health Service (NHS) is pushing a short pro-vaccine music video featuring a lesbian kiss on social media in order to encourage young people to get inoculated, under the hashtag #getyourshot.
Footage of a TikTok version of the video uploaded to Twitter by Freddy Gray, deputy editor of The Spectator magazine, features a young black man receiving a coronavirus jab before the scene transitions to two young white women sharing an intimate kiss on a couch in the middle of some sort of industrial space, while an ethnically diverse cast of characters dance and socialise around them.
“Two shots, yes please. Now chase the heat,” sings a narrator as the scene unfolds.
“Got it booked, got it done. Now I’m out on the run,” he continues.
“Let’s dance. Let’s be. Let’s touch. Let’s see. Dance floors, new scenes. Get yours, then be,” he implores, suggesting that vaccination is the youth’s path back to a life of freedom and hedonism.
Curiously, versions of the video uploaded directly to Twitter or shared from YouTube by several verified NHS accounts, including NHS Midlands, the NHS Sunderland Clinical Commissioning Group, and the North Tyneside Clinical Commissioning Group, have opted to cut the lesbian kiss scene, substituting a scene from a poorly-lit rave instead.
However, nowordsuk, the front group producing the videos “In partnership with the NHS”, still has both the lesbian kiss version and non-lesbian kiss version of the video available on both Instagram and YouTube.
At least three other versions of the video seem to exist, with one having a football (soccer) theme, one emphasising how vaccinated youths can “Get away from the home”, and one featuring a generic multi-ethnic party.
Other NHS accounts have been trying to “get down with the kids” without the nowordsuk material, with the NHS County Durham Clinical Commissioning Group trying to hype followers by telling them it is “Time to get WAXED, VAXED & READY FOR SUMMER”, for example.
The drive to vaccinate young people comes as reports indicate that the vaccination rate in Britain is falling, with hesitancy among the youth thought to be a major factor.