Countries offering incentives to convince people to take COVID -19 jabs ethical?

It’s unbelievable that in a matter of weeks, some parts of the globe have gone from trying to get enough vaccines, to having them, and now dealing with vaccine hesitancy.

An array of incentive for Covid-19 jab across the world includes: lottery draws, gift cards, free state pack pass, beers, etc.

Some economists and politicians have resulted to offering incentives, but that is risky as it is sending an unintended message. Humans do not respond to incentives like rats pressing levers for food, they try to interpret what being offered payment means. In this case, the offer risks implying that the vaccine is not a thing of value, hence increase hesitancy.

Paying people to get vaccinated against COVID-19 might be a reasonable policy if it were necessary to achieve herd immunity. Yet payment-for-vaccination proposals are not only unnecessary, but problematic. Incentives to convince people to take Covid-19 vaccine meant backfire due to:

1 Moral obligation:

people have a moral duty to be vaccinated, including a duty to promote their own health, a duty to others to promote the community benefit of vaccination, and a duty to society for individuals to do their fair share in putting a stop to the pandemic. Being vaccinated in order to receive a $1000 or $1500 incentive robs the act of moral significance. However, it is morally appropriate to offer payment to people who are vaccinated to reimburse reasonable vaccine-related expenses or as a form of compensation for the time and effort expended to become vaccinated, analogous to the modest payment offered to citizens summoned for jury duty. Such payments may even be morally imperative if they are necessary to overcome barriers to vaccination.

2 Wasting money:

paying a substantial sum as an incentive to overcome vaccine hesitancy and to promote vaccine uptake is not a prudent investment. It is likely that a majority of the population will be eager to get vaccinated as soon as possible in view of the extremely high and increasing number of SARS-CoV-2 infections and COVID-19–related hospitalizations and deaths. Moreover, some of the documented reluctance may naturally dissipate as individuals observe others—trusted figures such as individual country's presidents, prominent politicians, celebrities, religious leaders and even their own clinicians—being vaccinated without adverse health effects and as reports of vaccine-related adverse effects remain quite rare. Accordingly, it would be a substantial waste to pay money to individuals who are already highly motivated to receive the vaccine without expecting or seeking an incentive payment and also to those who require only reassurance. There are opportunity costs associated with using money for cash incentives. Some of the proposals for paying people to get vaccinated would come with high costs, possibly requiring many billions of dollars; the money would be more efficiently spent addressing the pandemic in other ways.

3 Psychological impact:

some might feel that a substantial monetary incentive for vaccination is coercive. While this is a misconception that confuses an offer with a threat, there is a genuine ethical concern about the influence of such an incentive on decision-making. Offering payment as an incentive for COVID-19 vaccination may be seen as unfairly taking advantage of those who lost their jobs, experienced food and housing insecurity, or slipped into poverty during the pandemic. COVID-19 has shone a spotlight on the substantial inadequacies of the social safety net in the world. As individuals and families struggle, some people might feel they must accept a vaccine in order to, for example, purchase food or pay rent. They might feel they have no choice but to be vaccinated for cash. It is deeply problematic that the government would offer cash incentives to promote vaccination when it has failed, in numerous instances throughout this pandemic, to offer money or other supports needed to ensure that the basic needs of many people are being met. This concern may be particularly pronounced in rick and poor countries, which have been disproportionately affected by both the health and economic consequences of the pandemic. Although these countries would be expected to benefit from high levels of vaccination, other methods are more appropriate to promote this end than trading on financial insecurity.

4 Strengthen conspiracy theories or spring-up new ones:

COVID-19 vaccine hesitancy is rooted in concerns such as the warp speed development and approval of vaccines, politicization of the broader pandemic response, and even denial that the pandemic is real. It is unclear that offering incentive payments can or will overcome apprehensions like these. Rather, cash incentives might reasonably be expected to heighten these apprehensions or raise new ones, as offers of payment are often understood to signal that a behavior is undesirable or risky. In a climate characterized by widespread distrust of government and propensity to endorse conspiracy theories, those who are already COVID-19 vaccine hesitant might perceive that the government would not be willing to pay people to get vaccinated if the available vaccines were truly safe and effective. Incentive payments might also stoke new fears and, perversely, increase resistance to vaccination.