Will free COVID-19 vaccines be enough?
Dana P Goldman
Founding Director, USC Schaeffer Institute | University Professor of Public Policy, Pharmacy, and Economics | Former Dean
With some luck, effective vaccines for SARS-CoV-2 will soon emerge. There will be a first wave of people who will get them -- likely health care workers and older Americans in congregate living settings. After that, the priorities get murky.
Reports from groups like the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine emphasize the supply-side. (But see my prior post for why we think the National Academies got it wrong.)
However, there hasn't been as much research on demand. Is it possible we will have warehouses stockpiled with a vaccine that no one will take? Polls show a concerning percentage of Americans are hesitant. One obvious suggestion is to make the vaccine free.
Using the nationally representative Understanding America Study, we examined to what extent price matters for vaccine uptake, and whether it varies by race. We find that 20% of Americans would not pay anything for a COVID-19 vaccine.
More striking, we find almost one out of three Black Americans would be unwilling to pay anything for a vaccine. This is especially concerning given the disproportionate impact of the COVID-19 on Black communities. Black skepticism toward new treatments is perhaps an unfortunate relic of the Tuskegee experiments--wherein black Americans had their syphilis untreated to follow the natural course of the disease. Tuskegee taught use more about the "pathology of racism" than it did about the pathology of disease.
I suspect the public health challenge will be less about vaccine supply and more about demand. My colleagues and I will have more to contribute soon on this point.
Result driven goal orientated leader looking out for life's next challenge or adventure.
4 年First lets focus on making a vaccine that will not kill or maim people for life then we can think about how we will impliment handing it out. Too many variables took our country 15 years to get polio cases down to 10 or 15 cases a year from 15,000 a year. So we all have to be ready for the long haul realistically looking at a timeline not set by politicians and experts pushed by other agendas.
Managing Director @ Bethesda New Energy | Premier Development Company
4 年Don't need it.
We fix healthcare market access problems through clever pricing
4 年brilliant - and then there are people like me, who will NOT take it until folks at higher risk of death (like both my living parents) get vaccinated. I'd gladly pay whatever's necessary. Hopefully this reflects their expectation that their health insurance or the government pays for the vaccine and not that they see it as worthless...
Distinguished IBA Fellow, PhD, Expertise in data-driven strategies utilizing mathematical and statistical modeling in HEOR
4 年Extremely interesting take on the matter, thank you for sharing. Also the demand may change based on how effective are different vaccines, and how many doses are needed to maintain sufficient antibodies load.