I mean really, what the fuck is this?

This piece of misguided cinematic-trailer-style propaganda porn is so bombastic it totters uncomfortably on the line between the grotesquely superficial and the plain ridiculous.

It announces, like the glorious spurts out of Moby Dick’s blowhole, that the covid-19 vaccine is coming to Malta. The advert speaks of the vaccine as if it is avoiding the rest of the world on the way here, handed down to us, the chosen people, the only ones, it would seem, with empty freezers uncluttered with uneaten leftover pudding from last Christmas.

The vaccine is coming to Malta, I grant you. But it is going everywhere else on earth, for crying out loud.

Although there isn’t a single reference to the government in the video, the stirring score, the night-vision drone shots, the pans and the colours scream ‘partisan propaganda’ like Leni Riefenstahl gawping at rippling torsos on blonde demigods.

Careful there, ladies and gentlemen of the health department. There are enough loons who are saying they refuse vaccination because of warped notions they have that the health service is a component of some evil conspiracy. The worst thing you can do is fulfil their prophecy by subjecting the cold science of medical care to polarising propaganda.

Yes, the Health Department should be sparing no expense to inform people about the benefits of the vaccine, how it works, why all of us called up to take it must do so, and so on. This video does none of that.