In response to Recycle Chinese and Soviet anti-landlord propaganda to bolster support for Rochelle Walensky’s rent moratorium order?, Mitch wrote:
So getting vaccinated and slowing the spread increases one’s chance of having to pay rent. The incentives are not well aligned.
(The government says nobody has to pay rent in an area where COVID-19 transmission is occurring (90 percent of current renters covered). And they say that getting the vaccine will stop transmission (except that it doesn’t, according to the same government). Thus, it would be financially irrational for a community of renters to get vaccinated.)
“New Rule Raises Question: Who’ll Pay for All the Covid Tests?” (NYT) also raises a question of how people will respond to economic incentives:
Among the employers taking a different approach is Rhodes College in Tennessee: It will require unvaccinated students without a medical or religious exemption to pay a $1,500 fee per semester to cover the costs associated with a weekly coronavirus testing program.
To avoid paying $3,000 per year, in other words, an unvaccinated student need only get some card stock to feed into a laser printer and create his/her/zir/their own vaccination record. HIPAA would prevent the school from calling whatever “healthcare professional or clinic site” is written down on the record, right? In any case, on my CDC card, the clinic site information does not contain the full city/state nor any contact info. A college would have to be very motivated indeed to try to determine whether a vaccination card is genuine. The vaxyes service checks the lot number against the date of administration, but presumably this would also check out fine if the student copied the information from a virtuous friend who actually got the shots:
An initial review to ensure a match personal identification and vaccine card, vaccine dates make sense, lot numbers, and possible fraud markers.
If colleges want the unvirtuous to admit their thoughtcrime and unreasonable resistance to government pressure, wouldn’t it be smarter to offer the testing at no charge? Then the only incentive to forge a vaccine card would be avoiding the inconvenience and discomfort of weekly testing, not $3,000 in cash on top of that.
Obama always says if you are happy with your vaccine passport you can keep your vaccine passport!
Perhaps Rhodes College should read this (and applaud the absence of white males in the picture):
https://www.jhsph.edu/covid-19/articles/new-data-on-covid-19-transmission-by-vaccinated-individuals.html
Also note the sophisticated masks that the students are wearing. I’d get if they mandated KN99, but this?
Covering a lie with a lie will eventually collapse the lies into itself.
Forcing laws with more laws will eventually create new opportunities [1].
[1] https://www.npr.org/2021/06/08/1004264531/fake-covid-vaccine-cards-keep-getting-sold-online-using-one-is-a-crime
I remember, just a few short months ago, when they said people predicting vaccine passports were conspiracy theorists. The conspiracy types seem to be more accurate and consistent then Big Science these days.