From “hard to find” vaccines to oversupply? As the daily vaccination rate declines, states and cities are now considering strange ways to entice people to get vaccinated, even by giving them money.
According to media reports, the New York Mets and Yankees baseball teams will offer free tickets to fans who get vaccinated at on-site vaccination sites; breweries participating in New Jersey’s “Vaccine and Beer” program will offer a free beer to those who get vaccinated in May; Connecticut and Washington, D.C., are offering free drinks to those who get vaccinated; and West Virginia will offer free drinks to those who get vaccinated. West Virginia is offering a $100 savings bond for 16- to 35-year-olds who get vaccinated from the stimulus package during the epidemic; Maryland is paying $100 to fully vaccinated state employees; and Detroit is giving out $50 prepaid debit cards to people who deliver neighbors to vaccination sites.
Rowan University (N.J.) is also incentivizing students to submit proof of having received the COVID-19 vaccine by Aug. 7, and full-time students are being rewarded with a $500 credit that can be deducted from course registration fees this fall. Boarding students will receive an additional 500 grant to cover the cost of housing.
The subtext of these measures is clear: The benefits of getting the COVID-19 vaccine are not enough to convince everyone to get vaccinated. So, for the sake of vaccination rates, places are starting to hurt. But will buying a beer, buying a football game or just handing out money get everyone to get vaccinated?
The Times reports that Eric Feigl-Ding, an epidemiologist and health economist with the Federation of American Scientists, says incentives are “futile” and that even “bribing” stubborn reluctant vaccinators with a beer or a $100 savings bond “won’t get them to vaccinate. “, “they won’t budge”.
As things stand now, the population known as the “low-hanging fruit” (meaning an easy target) is still large. More than half of the nation’s population has yet to receive a single COVID-19 vaccination, although data from the U.S. Census Bureau show that less than 15 percent of U.S. adults are still hesitant about the vaccine. A recent Axios-Harris poll found that 31 percent of unvaccinated Americans are still “on the fence.
To achieve a 70 percent vaccination rate to achieve herd immunity, Norman Ornstein, a scholar emeritus at the American Enterprise Institute, recently proposed an even bolder $10 million lottery plan.
Uri Gneezy, a behavioral economist at the University of California, San Diego, says it’s hard to accurately predict how people will respond to incentives in the real world, and handing out such a large sum of money could backfire “because you don’t want people to think: Why are they paying me to have to get vaccinated? That’s got to be dangerous.” He said.
The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) says vaccinated people can travel safely and can be outside and at private parties without wearing a mask. The problem is that these guidelines are largely unenforceable. Ting, an epidemiologist and health economist with the Federation of American Scientists, says tying freedom to vaccination status is controversial.
Some experts argue that where COVID-19 vaccine is not yet universally available, immunization passports can lead to unintended discrimination, excluding the unvaccinated from public life altogether.
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