Editorial: Vaccine incentives aren’t the Pennsylvania way (right?)
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Hey, where is our big money jackpot?
Promising giant paydays as a possibility for coronavirus vaccination is the kind of thing that is attracting attention in some states.
Ohio recently made Abbigail Bugenske, 22, of Silverton the first vaccination recipient turned millionaire in the state’s Vax-a-Million lottery. Teen winner Joseph Costello of Dayton netted the youth prize — a full-ride scholarship to an Ohio university. Four more Wednesday drawings are planned.
So why is the Buckeye State so free with the cash? They aren’t alone. In New York, the lottery prize is $5 million, while Maryland is starting with 40 days of $40,000 drawings and a July 4 super prize of $400,000. Illinois, Delaware, West Virginia have all joined in. California’s prize cache is $116.5 million for 40 winners.
There is a lot of money out there dangling like carrots. So why isn’t Pennsylvania ponying up to encourage more people to get the job done?
It seems a lot like a gentle rebuke of a neighbor’s parenting.
“We want to be able to empower people to know that it’s in their control,” Pennsylvania Acting Secretary of Health Alison Beam told PennLive, instead encouraging people to do the right thing for the right thing’s sake instead of for a reward.
In other words, eat your broccoli because it’s good for you, not because you get chocolate cake for dessert.
From a financial perspective, this is good math. While Ohio is paying out $5 million plus putting five kids through four years each of college, Pennsylvania is holding back the lollipops in favor of lessons that don’t cost a dime.
Gov. Tom Wolf has drawn a line in the sand at 70% of adults being fully vaccinated as the minimum goal — the magic number that would open all doors and reset everything to the way it was before covid-19, including the mask mandate.
And it was working. While Ohio had 45% of its adult population at full vaccination and 39% partially vaccinated, Pennsylvania crossed the barrier to 70% partial vaccination.
Two days later, Wolf said the mask mandate would lift June 28 at the latest. Beam also said the state might rethink an incentive program.
It is the latest example of the Wolf administration making a pandemic move that seemed decisive only to pivot at an odd moment.
If the goal is to use lifting the mask mandate as the carrot, Wolf just promised to do so without requiring the 70% vaccinations. Pennsylvania had almost double the progress toward that goal that Ohio did and without paying out millions to do it. Beam implied that still could happen.
The shifts make no sense if the state is truly on track to cross that finish line — which the numbers appear to suggest. So why yet another mixed message in Pennsylvania’s covid response?