When I received my first dose of Pfizerâs COVID-19 vaccine last December, nobody paid me to roll up my sleeve. Yet, as vaccination efforts approach an expected tipping point, at which the amount of available vaccine exceeds the number of willing recipients, with the rate of vaccination far below the threshold required for herd immunity, paying people to take their shots likely offers our societyâs best chance at stemming the pandemic.
Private employers â including American Airlines, Marriott and Dollar General, have already taken the lead in this regard â but payouts are generally low: an extra day off or a few hours pay. The sooner the government starts offering larger cash incentives to the public the safer all of us will be; former Maryland Congressman John Delaney has proposed $1,500.
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By one estimate, low- and middle-income nations won’t be fully vaccinated against COVID-19 until 2023 or 2024.
Humanity’s future, in which COVID-19-like viruses are more frequent reminders of our shared vulnerability to disease, should be met with an African ethic of solidarity instead of the self-interested nationalism displayed over the past year, two ethicists write in a paper published today.
The analysis appears in the Hastings Center Report, a bioethics-focused journal. Solidarity, as described by the authors, “prescribes acting for the good of others and the community – not just out of simple altruism, but because one’s own good is intrinsically bound to that of others.”
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3 slides Credit: Courtesy of Vanessa Delgado
It s Complicated: why some Northwest Latinx residents and farmworkers hesitate on Covid Vaccine By
Vanessa Delgadoâs dad didnât want to take a whole unpaid day off of work to get a vaccine appointment.
Sheâs working on her doctorate in Irvine, Calif., but helped her father, Victor Delgado, get a vaccine close to his home in Benton County, Wash.
âIn my own personal experience, itâs been very complicated,â she says. âWorking around schedules of essential workers but then also making sure that, OK, he canât travel too far, he canât go all the way to Yakima on a work day, that would be just too far.â
Danville Area Community College in Illinois will allow students to take any summer course for free if they prove, in person or via email or text, that they were vaccinated. Students may still need to buy books or lab equipment, but tuition and fees for the course will be waived, according to the college’s website.
Julia Jackson-Newsom, associate vice chancellor for strategy and policy at UNC Greensboro, said despite the blunt enticements, students are having a hard time deciding whether to get vaccinated. She described “really nervous” students coming to the campus vaccination clinic and asking staff if getting vaccinated is the right choice.