Opinion: Unvaccinated People Should Be Offered Cash To Take The Vaccine
Washington Post, By Charles Lane, July 20, 2021.
In the bizarro world known as covid-19-era America, the people most suspicious of a lifesaving vaccine seem to include millions who supported President Donald Trump, whose administration’s proudest achievement was to back development of that very medicine at “warp speed.” Trump himself got the shot!
Non-Trumpist Americans are refusing the vaccine, too, even though near-guaranteed immunity against a disease that has killed more than 600,000 people in the U.S. alone would seem to constitute a pretty strong incentive to get it. And so it is understandable that President Biden and his aides are blasting those who are spreading anti-vax misinformation and conspiracy theories. Understandable, too, are calls to abandon persuasion in favor of coercive mandates, such as demanding proof of vaccination to enter public places.
In all of this, there has been far too little creative thought given to a potentially powerful means of herding the last stragglers over the vaccine finish line: financial incentives or, if you prefer, bribery. It’s true that large employers such as Dollar General and Amtrak have offered workers a couple of hours’ pay to get vaccinated. Purdue University gave vaccinated students lottery tickets for a chance to win $9,992 in tuition relief.
Ohio enrolled the newly vaccinated in a $1 million lottery. Anheuser-Busch passed out free beer. The Biden administration has asked all employers to offer their workers paid time off to get vaccinated, and extended an offsetting tax credit for small- and medium-size companies that do so. These efforts undoubtedly help explain how 56 percent of the U.S. population — including two-thirds of adults — has been vaccinated so far...
More,
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2021/07/20/it-may-be-time-start-incentivizing-unvaccinated-with-cash/
= new reply since forum marked as read
