Could Chris Hemsworth be our best defence against COVID-19?

Just imagine him being Australia’s Dolly Parton; the local pied piper leading us all to the vaccine booth.

If Elvis Presley’s very public decision in 1956 to receive a polio vaccination boosted rates, why couldn’t Thor deliver the same success 65 years later?

Parton and Elton John are doing the same in their worlds; why shouldn’t Thor be appointed the Guardian of our Galaxy.

Just consider his bona fides.

He’s an Australian, and a regular in the Byron Bay surf, since moving there in 2015.

He was born in Melbourne. He has three children. Half his work life is half the world away. He went to Heathmont College. He’s lived in three Australian states or territories – Victoria, New South Wales and the Northern Territory – and is a frequent visitor to a fourth, Queensland.

He’s a parent. He seems apolitical. His wife Elsa Pataky is Spanish, meaning they have loved ones a world away. And whether he’s Chris or Thor, most of us think he’s a damn nice bloke.

He devotes time to charity. He’s reasonable. And we’d listen to him, if he told us to have the jab.

If Chris Hemsworth ran to his nearest vaccine station, we’d all follow.

At least I would. And it’s women between the ages of 30 and 50 where the highest levels of vaccine hesitancy are being recorded.

Scotty might be from marketing, but his message is not quite having the cut through it should. Indeed, the levels of hesitancy have been growing – at least until this latest Victorian breakout.

The herd immunity we need to kill off COVID, in the way other diseases have been assigned to history, remains unassured.

But if Thor asks me to do my bit, I’m in.

Acting Victorian Premier James Merlino would be too, for sure.

On Thursday, he said what most clinicians have been trying to articulate for weeks: The only pathway through this epidemic is to be vaccinated as soon as possible.

And to take the politics out of it! That’s easier said than done.

On any honest assessment, the vaccine rollout is in disarray. The messages around who should be vaccinated, when, and with what vaccine are all over the place and the difference between states is incongruous.

Rules continue to change at every border, and the idea that our leaders would role model their sermons was proved laughable this week when at least one premier – Queensland’s Annastacia Palaszczuk – admitted she hadn’t even yet registered to be vaccinated.

So if a premier, who makes all the decisions about when we can leave our homes and what businesses can open and how school is conducted, doesn’t see fit to be vaccinated early, why would the rest of us?

Thor could take the hypocrisy and the politics out of this debate. As one of the most powerful of the Asgardians, he could be the god of immunisation.

And if he was asked, he just might do it.

So there’s a marketing idea from a Queenslander, Scotty.

And it uses a New South Welshman to help our fellow Melburnians, caught up in the latest COVID cluster that began in South Australia.