If you ever saw the movie The Matrix Reloaded, you likely remember The Architect explaining to Neo that the only way to keep people voluntarily enslaved in the Matrix was to create the illusion and possibility of choice. Why is choice so important? Because it supports the fiction of freedom – of free will. The idea was that without choice, people would simply curl up and die. It’s a very Western cultural notion.
So, today I got an email from TED, and it was about a talk given by Prof. Barry Swartz on The Paradox of Choice. Susan and I talked about it for a while, and we concluded that this was one of the problems regarding vaccine uptake. When we were young physicians, there was only one Flu vaccine formulated and offered each year. Later, there were multiple offerings from competing pharma companies. Still later, there was a vaccine with a higher dose for older folks >65 years old. Then there was a Flu vaccine formulated from live attenuated virus that could be sprayed up the nose. Then came a vaccine with four viral strains rather than three. And then …
We are now repeating the problem with COVID vaccines – so many choices; so many questions; so many different adverse effects from each one. Which one do I take? Screw it! I won’t take any of them.
The choices have become so many that people are more likely than ever to be overwhelmed. We two are retired physicians and picking a vaccine that we believe optimal for us is trivially easy – not so for younger folks who have no clinical background and many who have children.
I invite you to listen to this short TED talk and consider the value of lowering our expectations so that we can be happy and satisfied with any choice that is “good enough,” and stop letting the perfect be the enemy of the good.