Above, just one of the many billboards placed around San Diego in an effort to reach the vaccine-hesitant African-American community. Below, one of several followup billboards designed to reach a...different vaccine-hesitant demographic. “We’re not telling them anything they don’t already believe,” says Spiracy.

Above, just one of the many billboards placed around San Diego in an effort to reach the vaccine-hesitant African-American community. Below, one of several followup billboards designed to reach a...different vaccine-hesitant demographic. “We’re not telling them anything they don’t already believe,” says Spiracy.

“When we first started offering San Diegans the Covid-19 vaccine,” says Connie Spiracy, deputy director of media for the city’s Public Health office, “we found that there were two demographics where vaccine-hesitancy was dispiritingly high: Black people and White Republicans. Naturally, we focused our initial efforts on Black people; the Mayor is a lifelong Democrat, and there’s no sense in shoring up the opposition. Besides, if they’re dumb enough to be Republicans, who are we to imagine that they’d be smart enough to listen to our arguments, no matter how persuasive? It’s like my Black housekeeper always says: ‘You can’t fix stupid.’ And I’m pleased to report that our efforts proved successful, so much so that we reached all our critical milestones within the Black community before we’d even finished our ad spend. And it’s like my Black housekeeper always says: ‘Waste not, want not.’ So we thought about how best to use our excess funds, and decided that an outreach to White Republicans wasn’t such a bad idea after all. We spent some time researching their concerns about the vaccine, and came up with a program that is carefully tailored to the White Republican mindset. It is our sincere hope that soon there will be very few unvaccinated Republicans out there, and we’re going to do everything we can to help make sure that happens.”