By QUINTON SMITH/YachatsNews.com
Lincoln County’s commissioners are betting up to $230,000 that the carrot is more effective than the stick.
Despite being told a week earlier by its top health official that incentives do little to increase vaccination rates, the commissioners decided Wednesday to give $500 to any of its 465 full- or part-time employees to get or show they have been vaccinated by Oct. 31.
“Hopefully it encourages some people to get vaccinated and reward the ones who have been,” said commission Chair Doug Hunt.
The county will also provide two COVID-19 test kits to every employee to take home to, if needed, test themselves or family members.
“… a test would help them out plus potentially prevent a workplace outbreak,” said Commissioner Kaety Jacobson.
Commissioners also asked its legal office to work up an amendment to current personnel rules to provide up to 80 hours of extra sick leave for county employees in case they get ill with COVID-19 or have to quarantine. The new policy would expire Dec. 31, unless renewed by commissioners.
But unlike all of the state’s public university staff and students, all school employees, health care workers and Multnomah County’s employees, Lincoln County commissioners did not consider requiring vaccinations of its employees. Some national corporations – from airlines to banks to brokerages – have also begun to institute mandatory vaccination policies.
“We’re not going to discuss mandatory vaccinations because we’re not going to do it,” Hunt told YachatsNews on Tuesday, calling it demoralizing and counterproductive. “We think there’s better ways to address the problem.”
During its meeting last week, interim health department director Florence Pourtal said research has shown that incentives have little effect on changing attitudes toward getting vaccinated.
That’s also the case nationally.
After more than two months of trying to woo hesitant Americans to get COVID-19 vaccines with cash, free beer and other prizes, health data and experts suggested in July that those incentives failed to move the needle forward appreciably in many cases, and in some had no impact at all.
“A small proportion responds to the incentives, but they are definitely not a panacea,” Dr. Kevin Schulman, a professor of medicine and economics at Stanford University’s School of Medicine and Graduate School of Business, told ABC News.
Schulman and health experts recommended health officials refocus their efforts on outreach — something that Lincoln County is also doing — rather than incentivizing inoculations.
Coronavirus surges in county
Lincoln County is in the midst of a fifth COVID-19 surge, this time caused by the Delta variant, which is transmitted much easier than earlier strains of the virus. On Wednesday, commissioners were told that by the end of August the county will likely have more cases than the worst month since the pandemic began more than 20 months ago.
Hunt told YachatsNews on Tuesday that requiring vaccines of employees “sounds great on the surface” but would require excessive monitoring by staff who are already stretched thin.
“You could do it, but it would be incredibly complicated and we think incredibly demoralizing to our employees,” Hunt said. He said the $500 bonus is a way to “build morale and support vaccinations” and “to recognize the tremendous commitment of our employees and the dedication they have shown throughout the pandemic.”
Multnomah County is the only one of Oregon’s 36 counties to require vaccinations of all employees.
All of Oregon’s seven public universities have adopted policies requiring employees and students show proof of vaccination if they are on campuses this fall. Gov. Kate Brown has ordered the same for members of the state’s executive department and all school employees and related staff, and health care workers in Oregon.
That is expected to affect schools and already stressed health care workers.
Two weeks ago, Dr. Lesley Ogden, chief executive officer of Samaritan Health Systems’ two hospitals in the county, told YachatsNews that vaccination rates for SHS employees in Lincoln County ranged from 75 to 85 percent.
The deadline to meet Brown’s vaccination mandate is Oct. 18.
Lincoln County’s vaccination rate for people age 12 and over is 75 percent, one of the highest in the state. Hunt said he believes that the vaccination rate for county employees is at least that and “probably higher.”
Because they are classified as health care workers, under the governor’s orders many employees in the county’s Health and Human Services Department will be required to be vaccinated in order to keep working.
Money for the vaccination incentives and the $25-30 it costs for COVID-19 test kits will come from money the county received from President Biden’s American Rescue Plan.
If the county commissioners want to follow the research, then they should do so consistently instead of selectively. Instead, they rewarded themselves and other country workers for NOT getting vaccinated until someone (themselves) paid them to do so. Vaccinations are the right thing to do, especially when working for the public. Research in psychology shows that when we reward someone for doing “the right thing” we, in effect, teach them to not do the right thing until someone pays them off. In the future, when more vaccines are required, including boosters, people learn to NOT get it done, or to not do whatever they should ethically do until someone pays them. This is very poor, self-serving judgement by all three commissioners and contrary to the best research.
It would be interesting to know exactly what that American Rescue Plan money was earmarked for. Was it really meant to be handed out as $500 bonuses to county employee’s?