Ask LLOG: "take the vaccine" vs. "get the vaccine"
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A few days ago, G.W. sent a question about this tweet:
Remember—Biden tried to fire essentially every worker who didn't take the COVID vaccine. That's the real Joe Biden.
VOTE!
— Tom Cotton (@TomCottonAR) November 1, 2022
G.W.'s question:
I noticed was that he writes "take the vaccine," rather than "get the vaccine." To me, "take" sounds just wrong — I feel like the verb we use for injections is "get." And I wondered if "take" would make it sound more like the vaccine is an evil Big Government imposition, which the recipients passively accept (as in "take it lying down"), as compared to something you might "get" which would be more of an actively sought-after benefit. From googling, it looks like both "take" and "get" are fairly common, actually; but is there a way to find out if vaccine-skeptics and/or Republicans are more likely to use "take"?
I have three (partial) answers.
First, as G.W. notes, both take and get are used in the "_ the COVID vaccine" context. Google Search estimates 1,540,000 hits for "take|taking|takes|took the COVID vaccine", vs. 2,850,000 for "get|getting|gets|got the COVID vaccine".
Second, I agree with G.W.'s impression: in the "_ the COVID vaccine" context, get suggests a more agentive role for the subject, taking some kind of action to arrange the vaccination, whereas take suggests that the subject has a more passive role, getting jabbed as a result of someone else's actions.
But as the appositive clauses in that last sentence illustrate, these are not general properties of take and get. When you take action, precautions, steps, care, a walk, a picture, the last piece, etc., you're doing things. When you get sick, beat, snowed in, wet, a headache, the virus, the nod, knocked over, etc., things are happening to you. I'll leave it to the commenters to explore how strong the agent/patient connotations are when the verbal object is a vaccination.
And third, Republican politicians use both take and get in this context, according to the Congressional Record — and they do so in approximately the same proportions as those in the overall web search results.
Interestingly, it's only Republican politicians who use either alternative, at least in materials retrieved from that source using the search terms "take the COVID vaccine" and "get the COVID vaccine" — presumably because the concept came up in debate over presidential vaccine mandates.
The examples that I found (including a couple with other relevant verbs that happened to be used in the same speeches):
Lamar Alexander, on 9/20/2020:
Americans are saying that they might not take the vaccine. The first question people ask is, Are they safe? [..]
I asked Dr. Collins this question, which I think is confusing to some people: When you take the COVID vaccine, you don't get COVID? There was a time in the old days when to get a smallpox vaccine, you, in fact, got a little smallpox. But that is not what happens. As Dr. Collins explained it, he said the vaccine creates a sort of machine within your body and your immune system to fight the COVID. It doesn't infect you with the disease.
Roger Marshall, on 10/20/2021:
Just last week, I was in Kansas to meet with union members who are facing the difficult choice
of keeping their jobs or getting the COVID vaccine. […]
Mr. President, while I support the COVID vaccine and encourage folks to talk to their doctor about whether to get it, there is no doubt that President Biden's vaccination decree is an all-out assault on our private businesses, our civil liberties, and our entire constitutional system of limited government.
Roger Marshall, on 10/28/2021:
Unfortunately, thousands of our heroes are about to lose those very freedoms that they have fought so hard to defend, as Joe Biden's vaccine mandate is threatening them with a dishonorable discharge should they choose not to get the COVID vaccine. […]
Now, let me be clear, as a physician and a veteran, I am confident the vaccine has saved countless lives, and I encourage every veteran, every American to consider and to discuss with their physician getting that vaccine. […]
There are pros and cons; there are risks and benefits of taking this vaccine. […]
We have never asked people–especially military folks–to get a vaccine for a virus they are already immune to or a virus that doesn't affect them.
Roger Marshall, 0n 7/28/2022:
Last August, the Biden administration imposed a COVID-19 vaccine mandate across the entire military. This led to the expulsion of thousands of qualified, honorable servicemembers who elected not to receive the vaccine. […]
Recently, we learned that the Army cut roughly 60,000 National Guard and Reserve members from pay and benefits for refusing to take the COVID vaccine at the beginning of July. This decision was made at a time when more than 30 percent of its recruitment slots are not fulfilled.
Mike Lee, on 10/28/2021:
Allow me to be very clear. While I am very much against the mandate, I am for the vaccine. I have been vaccinated. My entire family has been vaccinated. I have encouraged other people to get vaccinated. These vaccines are helping to protect many, many millions of Americans against the harmful effects of COVID-19.
Cynthia Lummis, on 10/28/2021:
I want to be clear. I support individuals getting the COVID vaccine. I am vaccinated. I got vaccinated to protect myself because I have no natural immunity.
Cynthia Lummis, on 11/3/2021:
While I am vaccinated and support others making the decision to get the COVID-19 vaccine to protect themselves, I am very concerned about unacceptable actions by the executive branch to force Americans to get the vaccine.
Tim Scott, on 11/3/2021:
But now, because King Biden has gone back on his word or forgotten what he said, millions of Americans are facing an ultimatum: Get the vaccine or lose your job. For companies, it is either make your employees get the jab or lose your Federal contract. […]
Listen, I had COVID. I am grateful that I was able to get vaccinated. […]
We should not add to that ongoing problem by forcing police officers to choose between their jobs and taking a vaccine. […]
Being vaccinated is a decision every American gets to make for himself. It is an authoritarian overreach by King Biden to threaten people with job loss unless they get the vaccine. […]
Marsha Blackburn, on 11/3/2021:
Last week, I introduced the Keeping our COVID-19 Heroes Employed Act, which would pull essential workers out from under these mandates and stop the White House from unilaterally firing them for refusing to submit to a shot.
Roger Marshall, on 11/3/2021:
What my concern today is, is that so many of these heroes of yesterday, the COVID-19 heroes of yesterday, are now being treated so poorly. They are being told to get the jab or else lose their jobs.
Tommy Tuberville, on 11/3/2021:
Madam President, during the recent Senate Armed Services Committee hearing, I asked the Secretary of Defense what I
thought was a simple question: As the leader of the Department of Defense, was he against dishonorable discharges for members of the military who decided not to get the COVID vaccine. […]
But how does the President thank them for their service? With a dishonorable discharge for deciding not to take the vaccine. […]
Now, I am for the vaccine. I have taken it, and my family has taken it, and I continue to encourage others to talk about it and talk to their doctors about it. […]
They are forced to choose between coming to their job and working to support our military or taking a new vaccine that they don't want. […]
Mike Lee, on 11/3/2021:
Just 14 percent of Americans agree with President Biden that you should have to choose between keeping your job and getting a vaccine that might go against your religious beliefs or that might worsen a preexisting medical condition that has caused your doctor to advise you to be cautious in getting the vaccine. […]
And my copy of the Constitution says that he can't make law, which he essentially did when he purported to have and purported to plan to exercise the power unilaterally, acting alone, to require every worker at every employer
that has more than 100 employees–more than 99 employees to get the vaccine or be fired. […]
James Lankford, on 11/3/2021:
Americans have a lot of different reasons to not take a vaccine. […]
That's 10 instances of take vs. 19 instances of get — which is not statistically distinct from the proportions in Google's estimated counts: 1.9 to 1 in favor of get for the Republican senators, vs. 1.85 to 1 for Google's estimate of the web at large.
Such quotations may perhaps reveal interesting differences in contextually-implies degrees of agency, but I'll leave that to readers to explore if they want to.
J.W. Brewer said,
November 6, 2022 @ 8:38 am
Coming at it naively but with native-speaker ears, I think the "agency" angle may be exactly the other way round from what is suggested here. When a doctor tells you to "take" a medication, whether a statin or ibuprofen, prescription or over-the-counter, the implication is that you are the one who goes to the pharmacy and picks up a bottle of the stuff and then at the appropriate time of day you are the one who takes the right number of pills out of the bottle, puts them in your mouth, and washes them down with a glass of water or whatever. You are the actor/agent.
By contrast, "get the vaccine" seems parallel to "get vaccinated," which is a passive-voice construction in which the syntactic subject is NOT the actor/agent.
1. The nurse vaccinated my child.
2a. My child was vaccinated by the nurse.
2b. My child got vaccinated by the nurse.
2c? My child got the vaccine.
[(myl) The "get passive" resonance is certainly there, even when the complement of get is a noun rather than a participle. But consider that "go out and get the vaccine" has 220k ghits, while "go out and take the vaccine" has 147k, suggesting that get is fine (and even slightly preferred) in that agentive-promoting context.]
J.W. Brewer said,
November 6, 2022 @ 8:44 am
Hit post too soon:
So bottom line I agree with the intuition that "take the vaccine" sounds unidiomatic (although what do I know since it's Out There), but my Occam's Razor explanation is that the reason one "gets" a vaccine while one "takes" other sorts of medications is precisely that the patient's role is a more passive one in the vaccine context then it is with medications that the patient "takes." Roll up your sleeve and sit still while someone else is the actor/agent in the situation.
Victor Mair said,
November 6, 2022 @ 8:52 am
"Take" may also have a rather different meaning, viz., "accept", which is in line with Marsha Blackburn's "submit to".
Charles in Toronto said,
November 6, 2022 @ 8:57 am
Perhaps the key is which meanings of get/take we're talking here.
When I hear "get" with the vaccine I think of ads persuading us to "get vaccinated". I think of "go get it", go-getters, taking initiative.
When I hear "take" the vaccine, especially from anti-vaxxers, I'm getting shades of "endure", like "we're not gonna take it anymore" or "this is more than I can take".
Philip Taylor said,
November 6, 2022 @ 8:58 am
100% agreement with JWB's analysis. I take pills, cough linctus, etc., apply creams, ointments, etc, but get injections, vaccinations, innoculations, etc.
J.W. Brewer said,
November 6, 2022 @ 9:11 am
Other examples of "get" with medical processes that are not self-administered: one "gets" rather than "takes" an x-ray,* dialysis, a tummy tuck, a lobotomy, etc. (Obviously for surgical procedures "have" is the most common verb, but "get" seems to work with some.)
NB that the classic self-administered-outside-the-presence-of-medical-personnel injection is diabetics self-injecting insulin, and it seems idiomatic to say that they "take" insulin.
Note further (I missed this step in my example sentences before) that one can recast "My child got vaccinated by the nurse" as "My child got the vaccine from the nurse." Which is not strictly speaking a passive construction, but the object of the from-clause is playing a different semantic role in the situation than it is in "I got the prescription eye drops from the pharmacist."
*Indeed, the technician is the one who "takes" the x-ray when the patient "gets" it.
John Swindle said,
November 6, 2022 @ 9:14 am
There’s nothing sneaky or obscure going on. “Take” is starting to assume its additional meaning of “tolerate” or “endure” or “accept.”
He got a pay raise. He would get a pay raise. He would take a pay raise.
He didn’t get a pay raise. He wouldn’t get a pay raise. He wouldn’t take a pay raise.
[(myl) It's not "starting" — the OED gives several senses under the heading
II. To take something given or offered; to receive, accept.
* To receive (willingly or unwillingly) what is given or bestowed.
with citations back to the Anglo-Saxon Chronicles in Old English, and many later citations from 1175 onwards.]
Joe said,
November 6, 2022 @ 9:18 am
As a native speaker I agree that "take" can be more passive, like to "take" something that was offered, rather than go out and "get" it for yourself. "I'll take an iced mocha frappucino." In a similar political context, a state governor allied with Cotton might proudly proclaim that she won't "take" government handouts in the form of federal Medicaid expansion funding, implying that she's actively going out of her way to refuse it even though the blame really lies with the federal government for offering the handout. "Take" can even more passively mean to acquiesce to something that was imposed rather than just offered: "I'm as mad as hell and I'm not going to take this anymore!"
But I also agree that this doesn't sound like a conscious phrasing choice as much as an alternative idiom. To my ear it simply sounds wrong, not differently inflected; even a pre-verbal infant who can't possibly acquiesce or actively seek it "gets" a vaccine for tetanus, diphtheria, pertussis, etc. by passively (or not so passively) lying there while medical professionals and parents make all the arrangements, because "to get a vaccine/injection/shot/jab" is just the idiom I'm used to hearing, same as "to take a pill", even though there's not a strong logical reason it has to be that way.
Maybe it's a regional thing? Tom Cotton is from Arkansas and I am from far away from there. Or maybe it's a community speech pattern not among Southerners but among anti-vaxxers, who have such a thriving community in both social media and broadcast media that they can have all their discussions about vaccination inside of that community and not realize they sound different to outsiders. I think a lot of ordinary people didn't have strong commitments to any phrasing about vaccine injections before 2020; witness the number of Americans who started unironically calling it a "jab" (previously only a British & Commonwealth term) because we were all at home chatting virtually with the whole world and you can't hear accents on Twitter.
kmh said,
November 6, 2022 @ 11:12 am
I think the implication of the tweet is consistent with a "more agentive role" of take vs. get, contra GW and ML: Cotton is arguing that whether to get vaccinated or not should be an issue of personal choice ("taking" the vaccine is something a person chooses to do); Biden, in this framing, is being authoritarian by attempting to punish people who made a choice he didn't like. Cotton is messaging to people who think that Democrats and the federal government are inserting themselves too much into people's lives and denying them the freedoms they deserve; "getting" the vaccine would be more passive and, in that framing, Biden's actions would represent less of an affront.
Ernie in Berkeley said,
November 6, 2022 @ 12:23 pm
I was a little startled when I moved to San Francisco and heard people say they "take a newspaper", meaning they subscribe to one. Everywhere else, I've heard "get a newspaper". Google ngram has "take" peaking in the late 1880s, then plunging. "get" has increased irregularly over time.
Philip Taylor said,
November 6, 2022 @ 12:53 pm
I think that "over here" (i.e., in the UK, or at least in southern England) one "takes" The Times>, the Guardian, etc., if one subscribes to it (i.e., has it delivered on a regular basis). But if one is making a casual purchase, one might say "I'm just going down the shops to get (or "buy") a newspaper …".
Stephen Hart said,
November 6, 2022 @ 2:16 pm
I detect a whiff of "take" as in take drugs, take dope, take heroin.
On the other hand, in the olden days people said take tea (Take Tea and See!) and also, we take a vacation.
Simon K said,
November 6, 2022 @ 2:22 pm
Slightly off topic, but to me (a native English speaker from London), "get vaccinated" feels very different to "get the vaccine".
Getting vaccinated is a change of state: previously I was unvaccinated, now I am vaccinated; previously I was vulnerable to Covid, now I am less so. Even if they have reluctantly submitted to being jabbed, someone who doesn't believe in the efficacy of Covid vaccines is unlikely to say that they have "got vaccinated". They won't accept that that change of state has occurred (though they may believe that other changes of state have, such as being more at risk of blood clots).
Conversely, the emphasis in "get the vaccine" or "take the vaccine" is on the substance being put into your body. Someone may "get the vaccine" in order to keep their job, even if they think that it is useless or actively harmful. They may "get the vaccine" without believing that they have "got vaccinated".
J.W. Brewer said,
November 6, 2022 @ 5:02 pm
I don't at first blush share Simon K.'s intuition that "get vaccinated" comes with an implicature of belief in the efficacy of the vaccine that "get the vaccine" doesn't (w/o a hedge like "get the so-called vaccine" or some tone-of-voice thing putting "vaccine" in scare quotes). I'm not saying it's necessarily wrong, but I'm wondering how one could empirically test the claim. As a possible parallel, I don't feel or intuit any obvious difference between "got lobotomized" and "got a lobotomy" in terms of implied positive/negative attitude toward the event. But I again could be wrong, although again someone would have to figure out a plausible empirical and data-driven way of establishing that I was wrong.
On the original question, I suppose "get" is a verb of an unusually wide range of meanings and resonances in English, thus making it comparatively easy for two different Anglophones to draw opposite/inconsistent conclusions as to what resonances are evoked by a particular phrase using it.
Amith V. said,
November 6, 2022 @ 5:11 pm
I assumed, like Mr. Hart, that the word "take" was being used in connection with something like "taking medication".
J.W. Brewer said,
November 6, 2022 @ 5:14 pm
To myl's comment on my first comment, "go out and get vaccinated" also seems perfectly idiomatic. The syntactic subject sometimes needs agency and initiative to get into the situation where they are for a moment no longer the agent/actor, because they just roll up their sleeve and sit still while the momentary agent/actor sticks the needle into them. The get/take dichotomy that I am observing in phrases involving the ingestion of medication is not a moralistic one about ultimate responsibility – it's about whose role is active versus passive at the moment of ingestion rather than at some other, earlier point in the entire chain of decisions/events leading up to that moment.
One might say with equal idiomaticity "go out and get liposuction" or some other such thing where one can be confident that the person who is acted-upon rather than actor in the actual medical procedure is prototypically the initiator of the causal chain culminating in the event, because (thus far) the oppressive Illuminati/Panopticon State isn't actually alleged to be forcing liposuction on anyone.
Philip Anderson said,
November 6, 2022 @ 7:13 pm
Both “take the vaccine” and “get the vaccine” sound wrong to me; I get vaccinated (or get a vaccination), although I just got a flu jab.
The focus is on the process. And since there are a number of COVID vaccines in use, it seems to me you can’t get THE vaccine, only a (particular) vaccine – I got the Moderna vaccine sounds fine.
Anthony said,
November 6, 2022 @ 7:44 pm
Half a century ago, I had a part-time job typing up the draft of someone's dissertation. My employer and his wife were were Indian, and they would say to me "are you taking?" when I arrived, meaning did I want a cup of tea. This was Indian English, of course.
John Swindle said,
November 6, 2022 @ 8:10 pm
@myl: Of course. Thanks. I didn't mean to suggest otherwise.
Cshort said,
November 6, 2022 @ 8:47 pm
I think you got played on this. The purpose of the post was to get you to accept how the biden policy was represented. The policy was vaccinate or test weekly for companies with 100plus employees. Even the supreme court accepted it for healfh care employers. For rest, it ruled 5 to 3 with the usual suspects in the 5.
AntC said,
November 6, 2022 @ 9:50 pm
Is there a parallel with 'get' vs 'catch' etc COVID itself? ('Catch' usually suggests some sort of agency.) And then 'infect with'/'pass on' the infection?
It seems to me the whole debate in USA is focused on 'rights' of the vaccinee; whereas in NZ the Public Health messaging is about 'protecting' the vulnerable. (Our worst outbreak in the early stages before there was a vaccine caused tens of deaths in a Nursing Home. And there were many deaths of elderly in Sweden – which implemented hardly any 'protections'.)
Graeme said,
November 7, 2022 @ 7:39 am
Give n take.
Get n go.
Michael Watts said,
November 7, 2022 @ 7:19 pm
I can't agree with that; between "get" and "take", "take" is clearly much less passive. "Taking the vaccine" can only be seen as a parallel to "taking medicine", which looks like it should work on the semantics, but – in my idiolect – is impossible. You can only "get" a vaccine.
chris said,
November 7, 2022 @ 7:25 pm
You can get the virus itself, but surely no one would take the virus. (Not even if you say please!)
I think taking medicine has something to do with it too. If you take these pills you might get better, but just getting the pills isn't going to do anything. But if you're going to take one a day for the next month, you'd probably prefer to get a whole bottle full at once to avoid repeat trips to the pharmacy.
But this distinction collapses for the vaccine — AFAIK there is no way to get the vaccine other than to have it directly administered to you, in which case you are taking it right there in the drugstore (and also in the arm). So you have to come back to take a second dose, since you are unable to plan ahead and get it in advance.
When I got the vaccine I did, in fact, take it sitting down.
P.S. Is it too much of a cheap shot to suggest that the people who declare that they aren't going to take this just don't get it?
Averageseed said,
November 7, 2022 @ 11:05 pm
Joe speculates it may be a regional thing. This was my first impression, confirmed by my wife who is from the South. I grew up in the U.S. Pacific Northwest then lived in East Texas for many years. I noticed phrases like "make a picture" instead of "take a picture" and "use that mechanic" instead of "go to that mechanic" and "carry him to the store" instead of "give him a ride to the store" even "take the newspaper" instead of "get (subscribe to) the newspaper." Especially from old timers and country folks. This has the same ring to it.
Yerushalmi said,
November 8, 2022 @ 7:53 am
American-Israeli here. To me, "take the vaccine" is unusual but not unheard of – and *definitely* implies far more agency than "get", in contrast to your and G. W.'s impressions.