15 ms·

It’s good to give better incentives for people to be vaccinated, as many have urged for some time. I worry this carrot isn’t tied to an adequate stick - the un

• vmception 5y ago
  It’s mostly just accepting reality and gives states an alibi out of their partisan pandemic response Like, on one end you have states waiting for an impossibly high threshold of vaccination before masks go away or nightclubs open up with dance floors. And now they can say “oh ok that was old guidance, we’re good now” On the other hand it also caters to the states that ignored old guidance “ah! Sanity has prevailed! Now can these few businesses that demand masks stop fighting us on this?”
• kibwen 5y ago
  Ohio is holding five million-dollar lottery drawings for which only vaccinated people are eligible, and I expect other states to follow suit: https://www.npr.org/sections/coronavirus-live-updates/2021/05/13/996445109/ohio-raises-the-stakes-to-boost-vaccinations-offers-5-1-million-drawings https://www.npr.org/sections/coronavirus-live-updates/2021/0...
  • brundolf 5y ago
    Hah, that's a cool idea
    • wyldfire 5y ago
      It's genius. US should do a federal one. I liked the idea of paying people to get vaccinated [1], but since that encountered public opposition, this is the next best thing. [1] https://www.npr.org/2021/01/13/955594105/should-the-government-pay-people-to-get-vaccinated-some-economists-think-so https://www.npr.org/2021/01/13/955594105/should-the-governme...
      • stjohnswarts 5y ago
        I think if the feds offered $100 to get vaccinated that uptake would go way up.
        • wallacoloo 5y ago
          Or it could give people who are already suspect of government more reason to avoid the vaccine. A stranger on the sidewalk is giving away free cookies. If in addition they offer $100 to each person who eats one, does that make me more, or less likely to accept a cookie?
          • wyldfire 5y ago
            Poor analogy. The public at large has a vested interest in high vaccination rates.
            • ByteJockey 5y ago
              I don't think the public's interest is in question here (well, at least not in this particular argument). I think the point is about how much you trust the person handing out the cookies/vaccine and money. There are plenty of people who trust the government about as much (or less) than a random stranger.
  • aaronbrethorst 5y ago
    West Virginia is offering up cash, too, as are some cities. Seems to work. https://www.wiscnews.com/news/national/a-million-dollars-in-ohio-100-savings-bonds-in-west-virginia-how-incentives-could-improve/article_512da8ae-e307-5597-aa21-04f61970554d.html https://www.wiscnews.com/news/national/a-million-dollars-in-...
  • kiawe_fire 5y ago
    I sincerely hope the trend of tying very personal, individual healthcare decisions with what is essentially gambling, NEVER spreads beyond the COVID vaccine. I don’t know of many other ways to cheapen the significance of one’s own healthcare or the science that drives it than something like this.
    • 8note 5y ago
      I'm sure somebody will want to create vaccine coins, where the crypto currency are mined by people getting vaccinated, or walked their 1k steps for the day and what have you
• dragonwriter 5y ago
  This isn’t a carrot, its public health guidance based in risks and infection rates (including the induced risk of noncompliance by the unvaccinated triggered by loosening rules for the vaccinated.) > Will this move actually counter our slowing vaccination rates? Yes, loosening controls does that. It also reduces the harms imposed by the controls. Vaccination and infection affect the cost/benefit analysis between those effects.
  • rvnx 5y ago
    The problem is also the social pressure that this will add on other people by the anti-mask who are going to say "Why are you wearing a mask ? Nobody is going to check anyway, just say you are vaccinated, pfff..."
    • quickthrowman 5y ago
      States will begin rescinding their mask mandates soon, if they calculate their health care system can handle an outbreak among the remaining unvaccinated. Minnesota is rescinding their mask mandate once 70% of adults have had their first shot, or July 1. Edit: MN mask mandate goes away tomorrow. If you’re vaccinated along with a decent majority of people, why would you want to wear a mask? The vaccines have been overwhelmingly good so far at preventing hospitalization and death, they’re more effective than influenza vaccines.
• deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
• listless 5y ago
  Yes, but the important thing is that the vaccine is available. They chose not to take it. The argument that we need to keep each other safe no longer holds.
  • brundolf 5y ago
    Keep in mind there are some who genuinely can't get it, for one medical reason or another. We still need to keep them safe.
    • vmception 5y ago
      Keep in mind that that’s not gonna happen. Unless the President said that, your message is not going to get across. 848 Americans died today marked as a Covid contributed death. There were lockdowns across 90% of the country a year ago when less people were dying from this. So we’re just past that, sorry. Good luck to them. The goal was just to keep ICU capacity available for the normal distribution of emergencies in society. We’ve done that.
      • scrollaway 5y ago
        You cannot compare death and infection numbers with those of a year ago when zero people were vaccinated and the vaccine was still months away.
        • vmception 5y ago
          Whatever you are saying is just reinforcing my point? It means we’ve all been reduced to statistics for 15 months and we have now simply reverted to a mean where the world is not compatible with immunocompromised people and good luck to them, just like before Covid, and just like during and after Covid. They had a 15 month time period where people and the state would help reduce exposure to them, and that was the luckiest time for them to be immunocompromised and thats over now.
    • Animats 5y ago
      There are very few people who can't tolerate the RNA-based coronavirus vaccines. For severely immuno-compromised people, the vaccines may not be effective.[1] People who are going to have their immune systems suppressed for a transplant apparently present some problems, but can be vaccinated before the transplant or weeks afterward. That's a nice feature of the RNA-based vaccines. [1] https://www.uchicagomedicine.org/forefront/coronavirus-disease-covid-19/immunocompromised-patients-covid-19-vaccines https://www.uchicagomedicine.org/forefront/coronavirus-disea...
• interviewer0000 5y ago
  For what it's (not) worth, it prompted me to sign up today. :)
  • eganist 5y ago
    > For what it's (not) worth, it prompted me to sign up today. :) More for my understanding than anything else, and with every guarantee that I won't present any follow-up questions or statements, but why was this the tipping point and not the actual disease risk mitigation resulting from the vaccine?
    • tbihl 5y ago
      Not me, but a coworker of mine is the only guy in my office who hasn't been vaccinated (rest of us got second dose at end of January) because of adverse reactions to past (milder) vaccinations. He correctly assesses that he's in a very low risk environment, but at some point he'll probably risk the vaccine to not have pariah status. But for the last 3 months, there was nothing to make the tradeoff worthwhile to him.
      • hnra 5y ago
        Glad that he didn’t value not being a disease vector which could spread the virus to someone who may be at risk. Vaccines work when most of society get vaccinated, it only requires a small minority of egos to make a forgotten disease rear its ugly head again.
    • josephcsible 5y ago
      My guess: GP is young and healthy, so the chance of significant harm from COVID is nearly zero, and the vaccines for COVID have significantly worse side effects than pretty much any other vaccines given today. Thus, until today, it was a high-risk low-reward proposition.
      • lamontcg 5y ago
        The risk and severity of bad effects from COVID exceed the risks and severity of the bad effects from the vaccine across all age categories. It is a low-risk, higher-reward proposition for everyone. And even if all the virus does is fry your sense of smell you're better off with a few days of influenza-like symptoms from the vaccines.
• O5vYtytb 5y ago
  Do you think that the CDC gives guidance based on incentives instead of best health interest? Personally they lost my trust when they told us to not wear masks for some time early in the pandemic.
  • ninju 5y ago
    I believe that guidance was based upon a prioritization necessity to make sure that medical first responders had access to PPE. Once the supply of PPE was great enough the guidance was also changed
    • josephcsible 5y ago
      The problem is they didn't say "masks work but please save them for first responders until we get more." They said "masks don't work." You can argue they may have had a good reason to lie, but you can't argue that they didn't lie.
      • loopz 5y ago
        Medical specialists were concerned about incorrect usage of masks, which may increase risks of infection. Later studies contradicted those fears somewhat.
        • wikibob 5y ago
          There was absolutely no evidence whatsoever that “improper wearing” could spread infection. The problem is natural human bias to require higher levels of evidence to refute a practice than were required to institute it.
      • abracadaniel 5y ago
        They never said that "masks don't work", you'll find that they instead said "There is no evidence that masks work" as there wasn't yet evidence at the time. It was correct, but a poor way to communicate the situation.
• baby 5y ago
  I traveled a bit during this pandemic and in Arizona it’s like the virus didn’t exist. Nobody was wearing a mask, nobody. Even indoor. Even the waiters. I’m back in SF now and everybody is wearing the mask. Everybody. The adults, the children, Even the vaccinated people. Yesterday the waiter asked me if we could put back our mask so she could hand us our plate. Country of extremes. I feel like there’s no going back to normal eventhough I’m fully vaccinated.
  • galangalalgol 5y ago
    In TX people often, say ~25%, ignored mask mandates inside stores. When the mandate lifted it went to more like ~10%. I get it, I'm a contrarían, but it was surprising that once it wasn't required to be thoughtful, people were.
    • vorpalhex 5y ago
      Benefit of asking nicely instead of demanding. Texas folks are (anecdotally) very resistive to authority.
  • cgriswald 5y ago
    We had a lady on Nextdoor lauding her ability to go outside without a mask and being able to smile at a friend from afar now that she’s vaccinated. Masks haven’t been required outside when social distancing for most of the pandemic, vaccinated or not. There’s reasons for wearing masks (or not), but the decision to wear one (or not) typically has nothing to do with reason.
    • dehrmann 5y ago
      > There’s reasons for wearing masks (or not), but the decision to wear one (or not) typically has nothing to do with reason. It spreads so poorly outdoors (this has been abundantly documented), especially if your exposure to someone is brief, that the main reason is a combination of virtue signaling, hygiene theater, and because it makes you feel safer.
• thrwhizzle 5y ago
  > the unvaccinated can simply go without a mask regardless of their status. Oh, the humanity.
• berkeley101101 5y ago
  I just hope white vaccine resistors get what they deserve. We absolutely should not let them be among us without proof of vaccine. But I am also hoping this convinces all the Black people, Latinx, and people of color, who might have vaccine hesitancy for totally understandable reasons that it is safe.
  • neither_color 5y ago
    What do they deserve?
    • scrollaway 5y ago
      Don't feed the troll.
  • deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
• dehrmann 5y ago
  > I worry this carrot isn’t tied to an adequate stick If most of the new cases start to be among the unvaccinated, that could make for a stick.
  • kelnos 5y ago
    I just watched the most recent Last Week Tonight, and there was a clip of a man whose mother refused the vaccine, caught COVID, and is now in the ICU on a ventilator. He was asked if he was going to get vaccinated, and he said he still wasn't sure. I really wish that stick worked, but it seems like it won't, at least not universally. But presumably there are some people for whom it will work, if one of their loved ones gets infected and ends up in a bad way.
• ergocoder 5y ago
  This carrot will lead to reopen the office and commute. Good lord. It is almost like they want to discourage people to not get vaccinated.
• Markoff 5y ago
  where exactly incentives end and discrimination starts? it's very narrow line I think people should take care about their own health, if you are in risk group get vaccinated, if you are not in risk group what's the point urging someone to get vaccinated if risk groups are vaccinated or are ready to bear risks?
  • kelnos 5y ago
    Some people in high-risk groups are not vaccinated, mostly due to allergies or other medical conditions. Low-risk people can still become infected, never show symptoms, and pass the virus to someone else without realizing it. Risking that happening while a vaccine is available is just irresponsible and selfish. Throughout this pandemic, my biggest fear was not getting COVID myself, but unwittingly giving it to someone vulnerable who then died.
  • maddyboo 5y ago
    Mutations and variants.
• cm2187 5y ago
  So wearing a mask as a punishment? That will further trust in public health policies.
  • watwut 5y ago
    Unvaccinated should wear mask, because they are more likely to spread it. Vaccinated dont have to wear mask, because they are less likely to spread it. Making masks into that big punishment and unfairness definitely killed my trust into whole lot of people and groups of people.