Strategies For Improving Immunity In Patients. Real Time Measurements In Patients

 

The once-promising pace of Covid-19 vaccination in the United States has slowed, from a peak of 3.38 million shots on April 13, 2021, to fewer than 2 million doses per day in May. Until recently, Americans were competing for limited vaccination slots — a situation that raised equity concerns — but now supply exceeds demand in much of the country, and mass vaccination clinics are closing.

 

Yet the United States remains far from the herd-immunity target of roughly 80%: approximately 47% of Americans have received at least one dose of Covid-19 vaccine. What should we do to motivate millions more to participate?

 

Increasingly concerned that standard “information and education” approaches to encouraging vaccination are inadequate, some state governments and businesses are starting to pay people to get vaccinated. Incentives range from $100 savings bonds or gift cards in West Virginia, to free beer and other beverages in New Jersey and Connecticut, to daily Krispy Kreme donuts nationwide. The highest stakes are in New York, which is offering a lottery with a $5 million grand prize, and Ohio, where five lotteries will each award $1 million to a vaccinated adult and a full-ride college scholarship to a vaccinated child. Do such incentives represent a desirable path forward?

 

Moreover, economists typically acknowledge that there is a role for government intervention in the face of externalities — effects of individuals’ actions on other people. A classic negative externality is a factory polluting the air: absent government sanctions, many factories would “overproduce” pollution, since dirtier technology is cheaper. Vaccination confers a positive externality, protecting other people as well as the vaccinee. In a free market, people may undervalue the beneficial effect of their actions on others; goods with positive externalities may therefore end up being underproduced. Subsidies and incentives are a logical policy approach in the presence of positive externalities.

 

In addition, incentives are useful in situations where behavior changes can reduce future health expenditures. In the case of Covid-19 vaccination, the positive return on incentives may be considerable: in the United States alone, the cumulative financial costs of the pandemic are estimated at more than $16 trillion.