People’s interest in the COVID-19 vaccine jumped after the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention announced that fully vaccinated people could remove their masks, according to CNN.
- “This shows incentives matter,” said Dr. Jonathan Reiner, who is a professor of medicine and surgery at George Washington University School of Medicine, according to CNN. “People needed a carrot, and the carrot was the ability to drop the mask in most settings.”
Specifically, vaccines.gov data showed that “the number of visits to the site started to climb” after the CDC announced fully vaccinated people could drop their masks.
- The number of visits was the second-highest number of visits since April 30, which was when the website launched, according to CNN.
- “It’s amazing — really amazing,” John Brownstein, co-founder of VaccineFinder, which runs the website, told CNN.
The CDC’s decision to say that fully vaccinated people can remove their face masks was met with skepticism, as officials worried it might lead to more cases. Duke University professor Dan Ariely, who studies both economics and psychology, told NPR he didn’t think incentives like the CDC’s change would encourage people to get vaccinated.
- “I think it’s going to help the people who are on the fence, but it’s not going to be enough,” he said.
- “The logic of easing the constraints is predicated on the fact that people will be honest, and if people stop being honest,” he said.
Dr. Anthony Fauci, one of the country’s top infectious disease experts, told CNN the guideline changes were based on the idea that people would be honest about their vaccine status.
“You’re gonna be depending on people being honest enough to say whether they are vaccinated or not,” Fauci told CNN.