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Politico: Million-dollar lotteries fail to cut through vaccine apathy

State efforts to juice Covid-19 vaccination rates through million-dollar lotteries haven’t reversed the steep decline in adults seeking out shots when many pockets of the country remain vulnerable to the coronavirus.

While Ohio did see a two-week bump in adult vaccination rates last month after becoming the first state to offer sizable cash prizes, the pace of vaccinations there has already fallen off. And states that followed its headline-grabbing example made some small gains without showing evidence of any comparable surge, a POLITICO analysis of federal and state data shows.

State lotteries and giveaways appear to offer diminishing returns in part because the so-called movable middle — the group that is willing but not persuaded to get vaccinated — gets smaller and smaller every day.

At this point, incremental progress is likely the best a governor can hope for, said David Asch, director of the Center for Health Care Innovation at the University of Pennsylvania.

Read more at Politico.