Games in the Time of COVID-19: Promoting Mechanism Design for Pandemic Response

TL;DR

This paper uses game theory to analyze how individual incentives and national policies impact the effectiveness of COVID-19 measures, emphasizing the importance of mechanism design for optimal pandemic response.

Contribution

It introduces a mechanism design framework to improve pandemic response strategies by accounting for individual incentives and policy transparency.

Findings

Individual incentives can lead to sub-optimal health outcomes.

Proper mechanism design aligns individual actions with social good.

No universal solution exists; tailored policies are necessary.

Abstract

Most governments employ a set of quasi-standard measures to fight COVID-19 including wearing masks, social distancing, virus testing, contact tracing, and vaccination. However, combining these measures into an efficient holistic pandemic response instrument is even more involved than anticipated. We argue that some non-trivial factors behind the varying effectiveness of these measures are selfish decision making and the differing national implementations of the response mechanism. In this paper, through simple games, we show the effect of individual incentives on the decisions made with respect to mask wearing, social distancing and vaccination, and how these may result in sub-optimal outcomes. We also demonstrate the responsibility of national authorities in designing these games properly regarding data transparency, the chosen policies and their influence on the preferred outcome. We promote a mechanism design approach: it is in the best interest of every government to carefully balance social good and response costs when implementing their respective pandemic response mechanism; moreover, there is no one-size-fits-all solution when designing an effective solution.