To selfie or not to selfie? Why the joy of getting vaccinated is drawing backlash.

Some people despise the smiley selfies, as the virus that has killed more than 2.5 million people worldwide continues to take its toll. And most Americans who want to be vaccinated still are unable to get a dose.

But public health experts hope photos of people being safely vaccinated will encourage their vaccine-hesitant social media connections to do the same. About 1 in 3 Americans said they definitely would not or probably would not take a coronavirus vaccine, according to a recent AP/NORC poll.

Posting a vaccine selfie when many are still not on the priority lists is boastful and could end up inflaming people’s fear of missing out (otherwise identified online as “FOMO”), journalist Miles Howard argued in the Globe column. It also highlights inequities, selfie critics say, as people with better access to health care have had an easier time getting vaccinated.

“By all means celebrate, but celebrate privately,” Alan Drummond, a Canadian emergency physician, urged other doctors in remarks for the Conversation, an academia-centric newsroom. “Just don’t do it so publicly when a lot of your colleagues who are dealing with this stuff are dealing with their own anxieties and fears. We get it — we’re happy for you. Just don’t rub salt in our wounds.”

In stark contrast, Trogen in the Atlantic called the posting of vaccination selfies “a public service” because the emotional moment being captured is worth illustrating to counter the personal stories shared by anti-vaccine groups that diminish trust.

“The thousands of photographs of health-care workers beaming into the camera lens or shedding tears of joy and relief offer a profound emotional counterpart to the overwhelming statistics of the pandemic,” Trogen said.

Although most people cannot yet get shots, health-care workers can, and people with influence and respect in their communities, such as physicians, have the power to persuade others to be vaccinated with encouraging posts, according to Richard Baron, the president and chief executive of the American Board of Internal Medicine, which suggested that its members post vaccine selfies and affirming messages such as “I got vaccinated and you should, too!”

“I think we need to use every channel available,” Baron said in an interview.

Public officials have taken that cue, sharing their vaccinations publicly to reassure others, including President Biden and Vice President Harris, who were given shots at news gatherings. Celebrities have shared their experience with their large audience: NBC’s “Today” show weatherman Al Roker received his first dose on the show live while “Queer Eye” star Jonathan Van Ness, who is HIV-positive, posted his mid-shot selfie on Instagram, writing in the caption that people with underlying conditions should check their state’s eligibility requirements for appointments.

Offering selfie stations, or spaces that are decorated at vaccination sites to allow people to pose and post from those locations, is one method officials have used to encourage posts.

On Thursday, the conservative commentator Noah Rothman took aim at a decked-out selfie station at a New Jersey mass vaccination site, calling the photo op “dystopian” considering the setting: “a recently liquidated Lord & Taylor that had been converted by the military and FEMA into a venue to mitigate the ongoing global plague.”

Baron, like many users who responded to Rothman’s post, disagreed that the selfie station was inappropriate if it helped to normalize vaccines.

“It makes it normative,” Baron said. “It makes it the thing to do.”

Before uploading your selfie, you should make sure you have permission from people in the photo and leave out your personal information such as your Centers for Disease Control and Prevention vaccination card, the Federal Trade Commission advised.

When Baron posted photos of himself receiving both doses, he didn’t include the needle to avoid scaring people away, and he smiled — albeit through a mask.

He said he wanted to express the joy that comes with receiving immune protection from the virus, which will eventually get people back to normal life.

“If you’ve been vaccinated, there are things you can do — restaurants, airplanes,” he said. “You still want people wearing masks, but there’s a lot of good reasons for people to want the vaccine, and getting people excited about that, I don’t think there’s anything wrong with that at all.”

Kimberly Manning, a physician at Atlanta’s Grady Hospital, kept up the enthusiasm in a video she tweeted after she was vaccinated, freestyling to the tune of the song “My Shot” from the hit Broadway musical “Hamilton.”

“I’m not throwing away my shot,” Manning rapped. “Let’s make a toast, just got my second dose. I’m still gonna rock a mask and not stand close, ‘cause this SARS-CoV-2 is not playin, people dyin’, disabled. I’m sayin’ if a vaccine will help us I’m with it.’”

Black doctors such as Manning have shared their own selfies to embolden other Black people, a population disproportionately affected by the pandemic but which also has expressed skepticism about the vaccines.

Manning acknowledges in the video that Black people who feel unsure about the vaccines have various reasons for their hesitancy. “If you got questions, we listening, we ears, but don’t lose your life over undiscussed fears,” she rhymed.

People who post about getting vaccinated should be considerate of those different perspectives without lumping them together, Manning said in an interview. Those concerns include legitimate fears, she said, referring to a lingering mistrust of the medical system rooted in a history of prejudice, including the infamous syphilis study in Tuskegee, Ala., that monitored Black men with the disease and let them suffer and die without treatment.

“I believe science is real,” she said. “But I also know that history is real. I know that it’s real that people who look like me — long before the untreated-syphilis study in Macon County, Alabama — were tortured and mistreated in the name of science.”

The outreach to those who are unsure about the medical system also doesn’t end with posting selfies, Manning said. After working at Grady for the past two decades, she said, it is important to continue the dialogue about mistrust. The Hamilton-esque video was part of that, she said.

“This is deeper than a post on social media,” Manning said. “This is a lifestyle for a lot of us.”

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