As vaccination rates miss arbitrary goals, Ohio has concocted a plan to increase turnout. No, the state isn’t offering weed like they are in Washington. Ohio is instead offering its unvaccinated residence their own money.
On Monday, the Columbus city council approved a program to pay $50 per Pfizer jab or the full $100 for the single Johnson & Johnson vaccine. Reception to the program has been mixed, to say the least.
City council president Elizabeth Brown said the plan aimed to “take any barrier they might have out of the picture”. Those barriers presumably being anything from procrastination to justifiable skepticism or even a medical condition that legitimately excludes them from being vaccinated. A condition like a heart issue, for example; the CDC itself has exclaimed that the mRNA vaccine has a stronger link to cardiac inflammation than what is typically found – namely in younger males.
Columbus has appropriated $275,000 to fund the program, making 2750 residence eligible for their $100 back. This program is made all the more enticing and all them less ethical when you consider the poverty rate of Columbus residence. According to the 2017 ACS, the number of Columbus residence that were in poverty at the conclusion of the 5-year study sat at 20.8%. That percentage could have, in no way, been elevated by the shuttering of hundreds of small businesses wiped out by year-long lockdowns and riots.
Regardless of the concerns, be they reasonable or not, efforts to increase vaccination rates continue. Little credence is lent to conciliation between patient and doctor. Taking advantage of financial hardship to leverage a medical initiative that is not one-size-fits-all is creepy at best and sinister at worst.