MORGANTOWN — Gov. Jim Justice on Wednesday continued his push to get more West Virginians vaccinated, especially those ages 16-35, where the COVID virus is spreading most rapidly.
He said that the $100 savings bond program he announced Monday will be retroactive, so everyone in that age group who has been or will be vaccinated will get a bond.
About 52% of the eligible population has been vaccinated, he said, and getting a significant portion of the 16-35s would push the state to 70%, the bottom end of the herd immunity range of 70%-75% according to prior briefings. That would shut the virus down and get the masks off, he said.
He told the 16-35s that 78.5% of those 65 and up have stepped up and that number is heading to 85%. “No question you are transmitting this thing now faster than anyone. Step up, please, 70% is what I need of you,” he said.
The Dominion Post asked for some elaboration on the numbers in that target age group. Justice estimated there are about 380,000 ages 16-35. If 80,000 have already been vaccinated, that leaves 300,000. If 70% of those get vaccinated, that’s 210,000.
If you add the 210,000 to the nearly 800,000 who’ve been fully or partially vaccinated (the official number is 704,441 with one dose and 566,476 fully vaccinated) and you get 1.01 million people — about 68% of the total population.
Justice said getting those 210,000 vaccinated would cost $21 million for savings bonds (actually, a $100 savings bond costs $50 but we’ll use his number to allow him to make his point). Compare that to the nearly $22 million spent in the last two months on COVID testing and you can see the value.
“That would be the return on investment that would be absolutely off the chart,” he said. It would also eliminate a tremendous amount of deaths and hospitalizations.
Getting those 210,000 vaccinated would also take a big chunk out of his “Beat 588 … Bad” program to get shots into the 588,000 estimated holdouts — leaving just 378,000 to persuade.
TWEET David Beard @dbeardtdp
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