Individual costs and societal benefits of interventions during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Publication Year
2023

Type

Journal Article
Abstract

Individual and societal reactions to an ongoing pandemic can lead to social dilemmas: In some cases, each individual is tempted to not follow an intervention, but for the whole society, it would be best if they did. Now that in most countries, the extent of regulations to reduce SARS-CoV-2 transmission is very small, interventions are driven by individual decision-making. Assuming that individuals act in their best own interest, we propose a framework in which this situation can be quantified, depending on the protection the intervention provides to a user and to others, the risk of getting infected, and the costs of the intervention. We discuss when a tension between individual and societal benefits arises and which parameter comparisons are important to distinguish between different regimes of intervention use.

Journal
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America
Volume
120
Issue
24
Pages
e2303546120
Date Published
06/2023
ISSN Number
1091-6490
Alternate Journal
Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A
PMCID
PMC10268224
PMID
37285394