Game Theory and potential disease outbreaks.
This article examines the strategies in people’s mins when they are thinking about getting a vaccine. It is intuitive to think getting a vaccine would be the best strategy to prevent illness. However, if one looks at the negatives of getting a vaccine (price, pain from the shot, possible reaction to the immunization) and considers the possibility of the rest of the population getting the vaccine, the payoff would be greater if the person did not get a vaccination. They prevent any negatives from the immunization, from occurring and also protect themselves from the illness because the rest of the population is vaccinated. Unfortunately, if every person thinks this way, then the likelihood of an outbreak would be higher. The same idea can be applied to flights. When the risk of an outbreak of a disease is higher, then less people will choose to travel. If the outbreak is less reported by media outlets or the outbreak is not as severe, more people may choose to travel. If too many people travel it is possible that the disease will travel and spread making the outbreak worse. The article concludes by saying how Game Theory can be used to predict the individuals that would make decisions that would be harmful to the population. Knowing what types of individuals would make those certain decisions can help public health officials limit the affect of a disease outbreak.
https://phys.org/news/2018-09-game-theory-disease-outbreaks.html