How to end the pandemic

Target the unvaccinated with carrots and sticks

Last weekend, my wife and I joined three other couples for our first indoor dining experience in more than 15 months. Though everyone in our group was vaccinated, I strode into the restaurant like a Marine leading a platoon through the streets of Falluja. Who among the unmasked patrons might pose a risk? Was our table near theirs? Had the servers, all of whom wore masks, been vaccinated?

It was at that moment that the idea hit me. Why doesn’t every vaccinated person wear a big “I’m an MVP” button when out in public? My Vaccine Protects. That way, the vaccinated would know what places and which people were safe to be around.

I know. Anyone over 60 remembers the 1975 WIN buttons (Whip Inflation Now), which President Ford asked people to wear to signal their willingness to cut back on gasoline and meat purchases. That didn’t work out so well – for him or for the effort to bring down prices.

This time, small gestures like that could make a difference. We are at an inflection point in the nation’s flagging vaccination campaign. The current resurgence is almost entirely among the unvaccinated. The creative use of government and private sector suasion techniques could go a long way toward overcoming vaccine hesitancy and finally bring an end to the COVID-19 pandemic and the threat posed by SARS-CoV2 variants.

The U.S. is approaching 60% vaccination rate for people 12 and over. It needs at least half of the rest – about 60 million people – to get vaccinated by the end of September to avoid the current resurgence continuing through the fall.

Minting more MVPs

The elements for a successful campaign to reach the hesitant have already emerged. This week, all leading health care organizations, including the American Medical Association, the American Hospital Association and the government-run Veterans Administration, endorsed mandatory vaccinations for their staffs. The federal government should follow suit by requiring vaccinations for its more than 2 million employees before they can return to office settings. Willing state governments should follow suit.

A growing number of large employers and universities are requiring proof-of-vaccination before returning to campus or work in the fall. Congress can encourage such voluntary efforts by offering a one-time tax credit or cash bonus to any organization that certifies at least 90% of its employees, staff or students have been vaccinated. It could also award a $100 cash payment to every person who gets vaccinated over the next 60 days.

Sure, that would be unfair to the already vaccinated. But the already-protected do get the added benefit of having a substantially higher proportion of the population inoculated against becoming a super spreader.

With Republican leaders in Congress jumping on the get-vaccinated bandwagon – even Mitch McConnell has been spooked by the rise in hospitalizations and deaths from the delta variant – there should be bipartisan support for those additional payments. The $6 billion potential cost (60 million times $100) is a pittance compared to the $850 billion the government has already doled out to households in COVID relief.

The media in recent days has highlighted the role a handful of cranks play in spreading vaccine disinformation on the Internet. Congress should give the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention a special appropriation to combat those lies on television, in print and on the Internet.

The CDC should hire top-tier campaign consulting firms from both political parties to run the advertising campaigns. Their social-media savvy operatives not only have the skills to fill unvaccinated persons’ Twitter and Facebook feeds and email inboxes with vaccine disinformation countermeasures, they have the time. Their work on the 2022 mid-terms is still a few months away.

Helping others helps us

The pandemic will not end here until it ends everywhere. The U.S. will face the threat of reinfection from variants until every global hotspot is eliminated. So far, the U.S. and a few other countries have addressed that problem by sending surplus vaccine supplies to needy countries. The administration has also endorsed waiving intellectual property rights to spur vaccine production by generic manufacturers.

Health care clinic on the Thai-Myanmar border (photo by Merrill Goozner, 2006)

But ensuring adequate vaccine supplies is not sufficient. The administration must also step up to the plate to help less developed country roll out their vaccination programs. The Biden administration has rejoined the World Health Organization. It should follow that up with large grants to the WHO and the Agency for International Development to help finance vaccine rollout programs across the globe.

The threat that unvaccinated people pose to those who have gotten their shots is growing. On Tuesday the CDC recommended vaccinated people resume wearing masks indoors in areas where cases and deaths are rising rapidly. A well-funded, energetic campaign to combat vaccine hesitancy is our only hope for avoiding a third deadly surge of COVID-19.