How Donald Trump Motivated Thousands To Get The COVID-19 Vaccine

Political scientists launched an advertisement featuring former President Donald Trump and his family endorsing the COVID-19 vaccine, in what they called “a large scale ad experiment.”

"I would recommend it, and I would recommend it to a lot of people that don't want to get it, and a lot of those people voted for me," Trump says in the advertisement.

According to the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the advertisement resulted in an increase in vaccinations, especially in areas with low vaccination rates. The video aired on thousands of YouTube channels in October 2021.

“Results indicate that the campaign increased the number of vaccines in the average treated county by 103. Spread across 1,014 treated counties, the total effect of the campaign was an estimated increase of 104,036 vaccines,” the authors said in the study. “The campaign was cost-effective: with an overall budget of about $100,000, the cost to obtain an additional vaccine was about $1 or less.”

The authors emphasized the efficacy of the COVID-19 vaccines, which have been shown to prevent COVID–associated hospitalizations. One of the biggest impediments to the consumption of the vaccines, however, was largely sociological, which the researchers sought to prove with their study.

“How often do political scientists and economists do anything that helps the world?” co-author Marc Hetherington asked. “The answer is, like, 0% of the time... We were so thrilled.”

An analysis from NPR in December showed that Americans living in counties that voted heavily for Trump in 2020 were nearly three times as likely to die from COVID compared to areas that voted for Joe Biden.