TAKE AWAY THE VACCINE STICK
States and counties across the country are cracking down on health care providers that aren’t following strict Covid vaccine prioritization schedules. It’s an effort to make sure that those who are truly vulnerable — the elderly, health care workers — get first crack at the limited shots and that the well connected aren’t skipping ahead.
But the state crackdowns are boneheaded and will backfire, argue many public health experts. “It’s very rare that taking a punitive approach works in public health,” Lawrence Gostin, a global health law professor at Georgetown University, told Nightly’s Renuka Rayasam today. “This is pure arrogance on the part of our political leaders.”
States should investigate outright fraud, but they should not punish providers making a good-faith effort to run a mass immunization campaign during a chaotic rollout, Gostin said. The punishments are slowing the vaccine rollout: The Georgia community with the raided clinic lost its biggest vaccine provider. New York providers have tossed precious unused doses for fear of facing penalties.
