After leaving office amid pandemic, Trump did PSA that boosted COVID vaccinations, study finds

Public service announcements featuring former President Donald Trump endorsing the COVID-19 shot resulted in over 100,000 additional vaccinations, a new study finds. 

The study published Wednesday in ScienceAdvances states that researchers launched a roughly $100,000 YouTube advertising campaign in October 2021. And researchers say the ads resulted in an estimated 104,036 additional vaccines administered in 1,014 U.S. counties. 

The study was funded by the Vaccine Confidence Fund, an advocacy group that focuses on healthcare hesitancy and is funded by Facebook parent company Meta and pharmaceutical company Merck & Co.

The researchers are affiliated with Washington University, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, North Carolina State University, New York University and University of California, Berkeley. 

"Counties that voted heavily for Donald Trump [in the 2020 presidential election] experienced COVID-related death rates nearly three times higher than counties that voted heavily for Joe Biden," the study states. The study also states a majority of the 37% of unvaccinated U.S. adults at about that time were Republicans.

The researchers hypothesized that creating an ad about Trump's support of the COVID vaccine may urge those who are vaccine-hesitant to get the shot.

The 27-second advertisement featured Trump's comments to Fox News supporting the vaccine, which as president he helped fast-track to stop or at slow the fast-spreading virus.

A total 11.6 million of the ads reached 6 million unique viewers on YouTube. 

The researchers said that about $1 in ad spending equated to one vaccine administered. Additionally, evidence indicates the campaign avoided 839 deaths at the cost of $115 per life saved. 

"Given plentiful evidence of small, undetectable effects of public messaging in other settings, these results are encouraging and represent a large return on investment," the researchers wrote. 

As of May 2023, 92.3% of U.S. adults have received at least one dose of the COVID-19 vaccine, according to data from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. 

Madeleine Hubbard is an international correspondent for Just the News. Follow her on Twitter or Instagram.