Opinion / Why is Pfizer the ‘hot person vaccine’? Moderna, Johnson and Sinovac don’t impress the millennial TikTok crowd

May 7 , 2021

Is getting the Pfizer vaccine really cooler than getting the Moderna one? The internet seems to think so. Photo: AP

Should you get the ‘hot person’ Pfizer shot or the Dolly Parton-funded Moderna? Of course it shouldn’t matter, but a glance at social media says otherwise

What does Pfizer have in common with Hermès? Turns out a sexy name can kick-start a ‘cool vaccine’ trend just like a luxury handbag from Louis Vuitton or Gucci

This article is part of STYLE’s Luxury Column …

A recent and thought-provoking article by Kaitlyn Tiffany in The Atlantic raises the prospect of a worrying social media trend: “The internet has decided that Pfizer is significantly cooler than Moderna – but why?” The article describes a growing tendency, particularly on TikTok, to rank the vaccines according to their cool factor.

Sad new for me, as it turns out, since I am now fully vaccinated with the Moderna shot, which is apparently the least cool of all. Slate’s Heather Schwedel said that a source had casually told her: “One of my cousins got Moderna, and I was like, ‘That’s OK. We need a strong middle class.’”

A vial of the Pfizer-BioNTech against Covid-19, which has achieved an uneasy cult status as the vaccine to get among young TikTokers. Photo: AP

Over various social media platforms, thousands of discussions are heating up about what the “hot person” vaccine is – and so far Pfizer appears to be winning out, with statements like “only hot people get the Pfizer vaccine” and even a clip of a young pharmacy technician telling viewers that one of the side effects of the Pfizer shot is “feeling like a bad bitch”.

According to the TikTokverse, anyone who gets that other mRNA vaccine (which, for the record, is comparable in almost every way), is a “peasant”. Nevertheless, fans of Dolly Parton have claimed to follow her preference for Moderna. But in general, according to The Atlantic article, the other vaccines trend behind in their preference by the social media crowd.

Dolly Parton helped to fund the Moderna vaccine last year and proudly posted a video of herself getting her first shot online – it’s not enough for Pfizer fans though. Photo: Getty Images

Of course, whether a vaccine is seen as the one favoured by the rich and beautiful is neither here nor there – it bears no relation to its performance.

And this is where things get interesting when it comes to luxury. In luxury, the value a brand creates is strongly correlated to the value consumers perceive it to have.

In my experience, value is driven only to a lesser extent by the features a product boasts – its performance – but much more by the story the brand tells.

The Atlantic article asks experts to weigh in, with one argument that presents itself being that the name Pfizer sounds more luxurious, with a hardly pronounced “P,” similar to the “H” in Hermès. The expert interviewed adds that the name Moderna may be too descriptive to trigger the perception of luxury and value. Factors like these may play a role in forming the perception, however this would be too easy to describe the phenomenon.