They won’t do it to save their own skins, but they will for a free lottery ticket.
On May 12, 2021, Ohio’s governor (a Republican!) announced the “Vax-a-Million program,” under which the state would announce weekly million-dollar winners for 5 weeks. Only Ohioans over age 18 who’ve received at least one vaccine dose can register for a chance at these prizes. Similarly, kids over 12 can register for a shot at 5 full-ride college scholarships.
The idea is to get vaccination foot-draggers in the door, and shots into their arms.
Bang! Within a week, shots jumped 28%. In America, money talks.
Read story here.
Would that work for election turnout, too? Paying people to vote? Republicans won’t support that. They’re passing laws against voting. In Georgia, they even made feeding voters illegal. Why don’t they just buy up all the pizza in Georgia, and feed it to pigeons? That’s the capitalist way.
Politicians like parents, and employers use carrots and sticks to get human beings to do what they want. A chance at a million dollars is incentive used by advertisers. As long as Publisher Clearing House actually gives the money away they can put their letters in yours and mine mail and e-mail box. The alternative is the stick and that involves political risk, spending political capital at a high rate for little return, and the strong possibility that the US Constitution forbids the government from forcing people to take shots. A small fine is different from the government going in and holding people down and injecting the vaccine into them, which is what the government would have to do to some holdouts. Probably unnecessary if herd immunity is roughly 70 percent and in some areas between people wh have had the vaccine and have had the disease we are there. Good luck Ohioans!
The U.S. Supreme Court ruled 116 years ago that government can force people to be vaccinated (the scourge then was smallbox). See Jacobson v. Massachusetts, 1905. Is there a possibility the current justices might rule differently? With three Trump appointees on the Court, of unknown fidelity to precedent, who knows; but legal experts wouldn’t rate that as a “strong” possibility.
There are three parts to the mandatory vaccination question:
(1) Can the government force you to get vaccinated against Covid-9? Probably yes, but maybe not until the vaccine receives final FDA approval (as opposed to emergency use authorization).
(2) Will the government force you to get vaccinated? No, that’s not being considered.
(3) Should the government force you to get vaccinated? Given the very high effectiveness of the vaccines, for those who get them, the argument for this is weak. It’s stupid not to, but if we’re protected, it’s your funeral. But anti-vaxxers should pay their medical bills themselves. We shouldn’t have to subsidize their stupidity with our taxes or insurance premiums.