Prisoner’s dilemma in reopening states during the pandemic
https://www.stanforddaily.com/2020/06/21/a-covid-19-prisoners-dilemma/
The current pandemic has caused all of us to make unexpected decisions and drastically change our lifestyles. This article discusses some of the decisions that have been made and how they can be modeled as the prisoner’s dilemma. Some states have imposed laws closing down businesses and ordering residents to stay at home. The article discusses how if two states act in their own self interest, they will both affect each other and end up in a worse outcome than if they cooperated with each other. If both states remain closed with stay at home orders, they will both suffer economically. If they both reopen their economies, there will be a worse loss as the disease spreads and people die. But if one state opens and the other remains closed, then the closed state will greatly suffer (worse than the other two scenarios) since it will deal with economic losses, and also disease spread from residents of the opened state. But, the opened state won’t suffer badly at all since it is making economic gains. The opened state also does not have to worry about the other state spreading the virus to them. This prisoner’s dilemma situation can be modeled with this graph:
The Nash equilibrium would be that both states decide to open. Neither state has a reason to stay closed since they don’t benefit in any way from doing so. Both states do however face penalties by deciding to open and will end up in a worse outcome. This is where the importance of cooperation comes in, an idea that the article gives importance to. If both states did not act on their self interest and decided to cooperate, they could come up with a solution that will positively maximize their payoff. The US has been doing very bad with this pandemic and the reason why is because everyone wants to do their own thing. Some states want to close everything down, and others want to stay open. Some people refuse to wear their masks, while others wear them religiously. The issues of this pandemic have even turned into a political issue, which further divided everyone and made it even more difficult for everyone to cooperate. The article explains that “The prisoner’s dilemma demonstrates that when individuals pursue their own self-interest, the outcome is worse than if they had cooperated, regardless of what policy they collectively choose.” I believe if the US had followed this idea of cooperation, we would be at a much better place with this pandemic.