Prisoner’s Dilemma and its relationship to COVID at Cornell
While COVID no longer remains to be a top health concern at Cornell, it is no secret that the university worked hard to battle the virus for a number of years. As we look back at the last few semesters, the lessons we can learn from them are worth exploring. Take the fall 2021 semester for an example, Cornell reopened its door to in-person lectures and on-campus activities for the first time since the pandemic started. However, just two days into the semester, we saw a sharp increase in the number of COVID cases. Cornell was forced to move its alert level to yellow, and in-person classes suddenly didn’t seem so appealing when we risked getting infected on a daily basis. Frequent updates in university guidelines for the pandemic had left a lot of students unsure how to proceed. But by overlooking the need for caution in our response to COVID-19, students and faculty were trapped in a real-life prisoner’s dilemma.
The prisoner’s dilemma is a concept in game theory that demonstrates how two prisoners acting in their own self-interest both end up with a worse outcome than if they had coordinated their behavior. You will be surprised by how closely that aligns with the real-world situation on campus. When the requirement of wearing a face mask becomes flexible, students are inclined to take them off, even though that entails a greater risk of getting infected and infecting others. The belief that vaccination grants immunity has, in fact, put a large portion of our student body at risk. Even with the alert level moved to “yellow” and President Pollack repetitively having stated that masks are required indoors AND outdoors, it is evident that a lot of people are walking around campus maskless. Given our freedom of choice on whether to wear a mask, each time we step outside we are decision-makers in the game. Wearing a mask protects others from our own spread more than it protects us from others. A mask reduces the number of droplets in the air that spread directly to a person or contaminate surfaces. Thus, if we do not wear a mask while others take precautions, we negatively impact their outcome. What the prisoner’s dilemma can teach us about coronavirus is the importance of genuine cooperation during this time in our own personal actions.
Sources:
Easley, David, and Jon Kleinberg. Networks, Crowds, and Markets: Reasoning about a Highly Connected World. Cambridge University Press, 2019.