Even McDonald's Is Helping To Fight Vaccine Hesitancy

McDonald’s will roll out coffee cups with COVID-19 vaccine information starting this summer

Two months ago, the biggest issue in the COVID-19 vaccine race was access and inventory, with people literally waiting outside pharmacies and clinics for leftover doses and frantically refreshing online vaccine appointment pages hoping to land a jab. Now that everyone is eligible for a vaccine, the biggest hurdle is vaccine hesitancy — as in, it’s not that difficult to get a vaccine now and yet, people still don’t want one. Sesame Street has had to put out PSAs to convince people to get vaccinated, Meghan Markle and Prince Harry literally hosted a concert to raise awareness about the vaccine, Uber lets you book vaccine appointments directly in the app, and now McDonald’s is printing vaccine information on their coffee cups — because apparently we need an all-hands-and-fast-food-restaurants-on-deck approach if we’re ever going to reach something resembling herd immunity.

McDonald’s is partnering with the Biden Administration and the national “We Can Do This” campaign, created by the HHS, to make access to information on COVID-19 vaccines even easier.

Later this month, the fast food giant will roll out Billboards in Times Square that contain “COVID-19 vaccine information from trusted third parties” and in July, all coffee cups and McDelivery® seal stickers will be printed with COVID-19 vaccine info that “will lead customers to vaccines.gov, where they can learn more about how they can protect themselves and the people they love from COVID-19, as well as where to find vaccine appointments near them,” the company said in a statement.

Yeah, it sucks that this needs to be done and that we live in a country with such extreme mistrust of the government and spread of misinformation, but at this point, if McDonald’s can convince Aunt Carol to just get the goddamn vaccine, so be it.

“This is a team effort — it takes all of us,” McDonald’s said in a statement. “We’re proud to enter this partnership to provide trusted, independently verified information about COVID-19 vaccines to our customers in the nearly 14,000 communities we serve.”

A lot of people didn’t want to be the first to get the vaccine, for fear that they would be “guinea pigs,” so to speak. But as HHS Secretary Xavier Becerra said, 150 million Americans have already gotten the jab, so like…you’re good Maga bro who keeps leaving anti-vaxx comments on President Biden’s Instagram posts.

“Getting vaccinated is easy. More than 150 million people have already gotten at least one dose of vaccine, and millions more are getting vaccinated every day,” Becerra said in a statement. “Thanks to McDonalds, people will now be able to get trusted information about vaccines when they grab a cup of coffee or order a meal. Ending this pandemic requires all of us working together to do our part, including encouraging our friends and family to get vaccinated. This effort will help more people make informed decisions about their health and learn about steps they can take to protect themselves and their communities.”

Good on McDonald’s for doing their part to address vaccine hesitancy, but at this point, Biden needs to start handing people $100 bills when they get the jab. C’mon America, let’s end this pandemic already.