By: Barry Horowitz
New York is joining the growing list of states offering perks for getting vaccinated, Cuomo is going with lottery tickets.
Wall Street Journal reported: The “Vax & Scratch” program, which runs May 24-28, will give adults vaccinated at one of the 10 state-run sites one scratch-off ticket for the New York Lottery, which has a first prize of $5 million and other prizes going down to $20. The tickets have a one-in-nine chance of being a winner, Mr. Cuomo said Thursday as he announced the incentive.
“If you were undecided about getting a vaccine or dubious about getting a vaccine, now you have an added bonus,” Mr. Cuomo said. “It’s a situation where everybody wins.”
Mr. Cuomo said vaccinations have slowed dramatically, with a 43% decline in the average number of people coming in for shots between early April and May 19, WSJ pointed out. Around 54% of NY is fully vaccinated, however vaccine hesitancy appears to have slowed down the amount of people wanting the vaccine.
Time reported recently: every adult in the U.S. has become eligible for COVID-19 vaccines in May, which are now widely available in most parts of the country. Yet there has been an alarming decline in the number of Americans showing up to get vaccinated, less than half of the population has received even a single dose. While data on the progress of the vaccine rollout are difficult to parse given the many moving pieces, this is almost certainly a sign that a large number of adults remain vaccine hesitant.”
TJV News reported: Evidently there still is a strong level of vaccine skepticism, which can be attributed to various reports of side effects post vaccination, and the reports from the vaccine adverse event reporting system (VAERS) from the CDC showing 3600 deaths which occurred post vaccination.
When Fox News Reporter Tucker Carlson reported on the VAERS reports on vaccine deaths, the agency responded by saying, VAERS accepts “reports of any adverse event following vaccination, even if it is not clear the vaccine caused the problem”. Therefore, reports to VAERS of deaths following vaccination do not necessarily mean that the vaccine caused the deaths, as they could have occurred naturally through other means.
Last week, NYC announced it is reaching out to 200 more physicians who had enrolled in the vaccination distributions program but never requested a supply of the shots
City Councilman Mark Levine, the chairman of the Health Committee, said more doctors, especially pediatricians, needed to get onboard to dispense the shots, NY Post reported.
“There are New Yorkers who are willing to get the vaccine, but they need a trusted source of information to answer their questions and there’s no one better than their neighborhood physician,” Levine said. “The era of the mass vaccination center should be over, and we should deploy those resources out to places like neighborhood physicians.” The NYDOH is planning on further “vaccine confidence” programs.
The idea of gifts for taking the vaccine has drawn a lot of criticism from commentators who like to point out that never before were people bribed with fast food and lottery tickets to take a vaccine.
