May 1, 2021

"Weirder still, one vaccine in particular—from Pfizer—has somehow become the cool vaccine, as well as the vaccine for the rich and stylish."

"Slate’s Heather Schwedel recently discussed the 'Pfizer superiority complex' at length. As one source told her: 'One of my cousins got Moderna, and I was like, "That’s OK. We need a strong middle class."' On Twitter, the vaccinated are changing their usernames to reflect their new personal identities: There are Pfizer Princesses and Pfizer Floozies and Pfizer Pfairies and at least one Portrait of a Lady on Pfizer.... Many high-end fashion brands are named after people, like Pfizer (Fendi, Prada, Kenzo), and many are two syllables, like Pfizer (Fendi, Prada, Kenzo). Second... Pfizer is a 'cool word' because of the F and Z sounds, which are what linguists call 'fricatives.' Fricatives 'are really fast-sounding,' which is why you might want to include them in the names of cars, or drugs that are marketed as fast-acting—or vaccines that don’t require you to wait a full month between doses. Moderna, meanwhile, has a lot of sounds called 'stops'—the M, the D, the N—which make the word seem 'slow and plodding'.... It’s also very literal, like a budget brand would be. 'Do you really have to call yourself modern if you’re selling pharmaceuticals that are in fact based on cutting-edge technologies?...No, you’d be more cool about it.;" 

From "The Hot-Person Vaccine/The internet has decided that Pfizer is significantly cooler than Moderna—but why?" (The Atlantic). 

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