Public health experts are increasingly concerned about the possibility that a coronavirus vaccine will be successfully developed but not enough Americans would be willing to receive it.
About 70% of a population being vaccinated represents the threshold needed for herd immunity, which dramatically slows the spread of viruses.
Given the potential problem, an expert from the Brookings Institution suggests that the government pay Americans $1,000 each to take the vaccine.
“If we don’t get herd immunity, we’re not getting our economy back and we’re not getting our society and our lives back,” Robert Litan, an economist who served in the Clinton administration and the Brookings scholar who authored the report, told Yahoo Finance (video above). “If you paid $1,000 a person — so for a family of four you’re talking $4,000. In these hard times, that’s a lot of money and I think a lot of people would take the vaccine for $1,000.”