A 13-foot plea to get vaccinated, made from bones and a Raleigh man’s frustration

Josh Shaffer
·2 min read

The symbol of Jesse Jones’ frustration stands 13 feet tall on the sidewalk, beckoning passers-by with a bony finger, forecasting doom from the sign tacked to its pelvic bone.

“Not vaccinated,” it reads. “See you soon, idiots!”

The towering skeleton on Oakwood Avenue in Raleigh is Jones’ most recent jab at COVID-19 skepticism.

Around its feet, Jones arranged a cluster of gravestones bedecked with sarcastic slogans. “Shouldn’t have tried the bleach,” says one. “My Dr. is on YouTube,” reads another.

Halloween and political displays

Cars slow to 5 mph as they pass. But Jones, an attorney with a Harnett County practice, is used to the gawking. His elaborate Halloween displays, complete with live actors who spring from the bushes in ghoul costume, draw trick-or-treaters by the busload each year.

The skeleton on the sidewalk, erected on Saturday, isn’t even Jones’ first politicized stunt. Last year, in the pandemic’s early days, he commissioned his life-sized velociraptor statue as a public health advocate. “Extinction sucks,” read the sign on its chest. “#StayHome.”

A 13-foot skeleton telling people to vaccinate or die and mock tombstones are on display at the home of Jesse Jones in Raleigh’s Oakwood neighborhood.
A 13-foot skeleton telling people to vaccinate or die and mock tombstones are on display at the home of Jesse Jones in Raleigh’s Oakwood neighborhood.

But the skeleton — which cost Jones only $150 at Home Depot — joined his front-yard rogues’ gallery out of months of annoyance with lingering vaccine skepticism.

Harnett County has vaccinated only 29% of its population, and some of the holdouts work in Jones’ office. (He requires daily tests or work from home.) The anti-vax trend extends across much of the state’s rural Southeast.

“It’s because of all this misinformation, and people are selfish,” Jones said Monday. “Maybe we can get one or two people vaccinated.”

Mother-in-law ‘died alone’

The doubt he hears over vaccination comes both from some churches and from suspicions over government intentions, Jones said. But the reluctance stings especially hard because his mother-in-law died while hospitalized with COVID-19. She followed health guidelines, Jones said, but some around her did not.

“We couldn’t see her,” he recalled. “We couldn’t talk to her. A mother who cared for everybody died while in the hospital. Died alone.”

The left-leaning political outlook in many of the neighborhoods around downtown Raleigh means few hecklers have objected to Jones’ public service announcement. Most of the gawkers appreciate the humor.

But some obscenities occasionally fly.

To Jones, the message sent by his skeletal town crier is worth a little abuse.

“If I’d have put it up in Harnett County,” he said, “somebody would have already target-shot it and it would be gone.”