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

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 article, 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. © 2022 held by the owner/author(s). Publication rights licensed to ACM.

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

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 article, through simple games, we showthe effect of individual incentives on the decisionsmadewith respect to maskwearing, 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.

Corona Games: Masks, Social Distancing and Mechanism Design

Pandemic response is a complex affair. Most governments employ a set of quasi-standard measures to fight COVID-19 including wearing masks, social distancing, virus testing and contact tracing. 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 wearing masks and social distancing, and how these may result in a sub-optimal outcome. We also demonstrate the responsibility of national authorities in designing these games properly regarding 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. © 2020 ACM.