Applying Game Theory to COVID-19 and Quarantine
Whether or not you were directly infected with COVID-19 or a close family member or friend was infected with the virus, COVID-19 has had a widespread impact on many people’s lives for several years and still continues to affect many today. When looking at the COVID-19 pandemic through a game-theoretic perspective, we all had two strategies in response to this disease. One can either stay in quarantine (Q) or break the quarantine (Q’). The payoffs of an individual facing COVID-19 risk in this payoff matrix would be the probability of being infected (p) and the probability of not being infected (p’).
In Effects of the quarantine on the individuals’ risk of Covid-19 infection: Game theoretical approach, Murat Özkaya examines the effects that the general public or self-quarantining has on one’s likelihood of being infected with COVID-19. When looking at data during South Korea’s start, spread, and end stages of the COVID-19 pandemic, Nash Equilibrium was present. The equilibrium point was (Q, Q) at all stages. The same pattern can be seen when analyzing the same three stages for Italy and Turkey. There were some decreases in an individual’s probability of not getting COVID-19 in Italy and Turkey’s case when compared to South Korea, but remaining in quarantine (Q,Q) was still the Nash equilibrium. This means that the clear best course of action during the pandemic in all three countries was to remain in quarantine.
This application of game theory to COVID-19 around the world relates directly to what we learned about game-theoretic concepts, since the method of analysis involves the payoff matrix with strategies and outcomes. In the lecture, we discussed that game theory examines the different outcomes that come out of a person’s possible decisions. However, we did not learn much about how this can be applicable to many other more significant real world applications of game-theoretic concepts on much larger scales, such as the COVID-19 pandemic. Although it may seem obvious that a communicable disease such as COVID-19 is most avoidable by eliminating any point of contact, applying game theory provides us with a way to evaluate our possible options and, whether or not the best strategy is obvious to us, provide mathematical models to provide reasoning and proof to our decisions. Furthermore, the discussed data may not directly include the United States, but the observations and analysis made on South Korea, Italy, and Turkey can serve as a model for effective strategies in other countries such as the states. In future analysis, game theory could also be applied to future diseases and a greater variety of populations to determine what strategy is optimal for a specific country for different kinds of diseases.
Source:
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1110016821000922