Could Your Astrological Sign Indicate Whether You're More Likely to Be Vaxxed?

One Utah county is trying to urge people to get vaccinated by sharing what astrological signs have better vax rates

Y’all, we’ve tried everything to get folks on the COVID vaccine train. Since scientific evidence, loved ones dying, long-term side effects, unending restrictions, and the possibility of a literal lottery fortune hasn’t been enough to move some people to do their part, one Utah county is trying something else. Some genius health official in Salt Lake County tallied up vaccination numbers by astrological sign — because not wanting to bring shame to fellow Scorpios might be enough to move some people to the vaccine clinic. Maybe? Hopefully?

“Now that Mercury is not in retrograde, we’re just going to leave this here…” tweeted the Salt Lake County Health Department. They noted that the chart was based on actual data.

“Astrological signs are tribal,” Nicholas Rupp, communications manager at the Salt Lake County Health Department, tells The Washington Post. “They bring out a competitiveness in people because nobody wants their sign to be ranked lowest, even if you don’t believe in astrology.”

Astrologer Narayana Montúfar tells the publication that some of the rankings actually do line up with the traits of those signs. Montúfar is a senior astrologer at Horoscope.com and Astrology.com, and author of “Moon Signs: Unlock Your Inner Luminary Power” so she knows her stuff. She says most-vaccinated Leos enjoy being the center of attention and want to be “admired and surrounded by their people.” That’s kind of hard to do when stuck at home, so it makes sense that the lions would want to get vaxxed ASAP. Montúfar points out that an Aquarius “relates most to community and social work,” so they’d want to be back out there among the masses too.

She says third and fourth place, Aries and Sagittarius, are fire signs that want to be social. “They’re just like, ‘I don’t want anything to stop me from hanging out with my friends.'”

Conversely, Montúfar says privacy-seeking (and last place in the vaccination zodiac ranking) Scorpios likely “don’t even want to disclose information” about whether or not they’re vaccinated.

And of course, Salt Lake County officials aren’t trying to suggest this table is some kind of scientific bedrock intended to truly shed light on why some people are so resistant to getting the vaccine. They’re simply aware that folks are tired of hearing about it and want to combat “message fatigue around the topic.”

“The whole purpose of the 10 minutes it took to come up with this was to get the conversation going about vaccination in this time when we’re having message fatigue around vaccination,” Rupp tells WaPo. Funnily enough, both Rupp and Montúfar are vaccinated Scorpios, so it seems they’d have a personal investment in getting others under their sign to get the jab. For their part, first-place Leos are just thrilled to be in the lead. “They are really proud of being number one, and that’s awesome,” Rupp said. “That’s one of the things we hoped would come out of this conversation is people taking pride in doing the responsible thing for our community.”