Science is the most effective weapon against covid-19. In terms of medicine the World is cheering for Health Professionals and Researchers to find treatments to save people, and to find the Holy Grail, “The Vaccine”. But they are not the only ones, engineers, economist, mathematicians, and members of the STEM community are fighting to buy time for others to find solutions. Unfortunately, in this crisis time is scarce, and to buy time for one problem is to take it away from another.

 

During the last three months we have observed our leaders to define policies for the pandemic that cover the whole spectrum. For example, South Korea did not hesitate on applying full force to contain the virus, whereas USA decided to act in a more relaxed way. In Latin-American we found similar examples, Peru locked the borders on day-one, while Mexico invited people to go out and help the economy. Why then these differences? One could argue that there is a component of ignorance, overconfidence or optimism bias. However, in the mind of most leaders there is not only one problem, but two. The first problem is the pandemic and the evident death toll that brings with it, the second problem is the economic collapse that will follow, and for which plenty of nations are ill-prepared. Hence, to provide time to prevent the collapse of the health system is to take that time away to solve the economic collapse and vice versa. Here I must pause and clarify the reader that I’m not suggesting trading lives for money, unfortunately people will die during the pandemic as well as later due to possible starvation after an economic collapse, and world leaders should try to go for solutions that minimize deaths and maximize the wellbeing of society as a whole for two different problems at the same time. 

 

This is not an easy decision because Science has never studied how to structure a decision like this. Decision Sciences (DS) have studied multiple decision scenarios involving uncertainty, imperfect information, and multiple goals at the personal level and in some cases at the social level. However, for a long time we have disregard analyzing decisions as a dictator deciding for a third-party entity, perhaps because it is a reminder of old times, and in general is consider as highly undesirable. None the less, here we are with leaders of nations deciding the fate of people based on their personal opinions. 

 

According to DA, a healthy individual deciding to get into isolation should consider the alternatives and the possible consequences. For example, if continue with the normal activity a person could get a utility “U”, hence, if  he/she decided to stay home the person will have a penalty “s” and get a utility=U-s. If a person decides to go out it could stay healthy with probability “p1”, he/she could get sick without mayor consequences and suffer a penalty “S” with probability “p2”, or could die with probability “p3=1-p1-p2”. From here the person should analyze the tradeoffs among utilities (U), penalties (S-s), and probabilities and decide what is best from a rational perspective as in Figure 1. Hence, if [U-s > Up1+(U-S)p2 +Xp3] the person should stay home, otherwise he/she should go out.

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From the social perspective the decision is analytically more complex. One alternative is by voting and enforcing. Hence, individuals will vote as previously described and then a central system will enforce socially the result using some rule, for example majority rule. Here the problem is Arrow's Impossibility Theorem that specify that in a social choice a “dictator” is required, otherwise a decision could not be reach. The second alternative is to solve the decision as an interaction of players using game theory. In this scenario an equilibrium will be reach, but that equilibrium does not guarantee to be socially maximizing. 

 

Currently in the world we see the effect of social decisions having two effects. A dictatorial mandate like in Italy and Spain, which in the short run improves the health problems forgetting the effects of a future economic calamity, or a social Nash equilibrium where leaders let society to determine its own equilibrium, which expose society to a health risk but mitigate the economic damage by letting a portion of the people to continue with their economic activities.

 

What to do then? Here we propose a third alternative by asking how should we structure the decision of a dictator choosing for us? This is clearly a very bad scenario, since the rewards or penalties the dictator suffers are disconnected from our own. Hence, there is a large space for abuse and profiteering. 

 

We as a society, have some choices to solve this. The first choice is to integrate into the political structure a mirror utility system that replicates our rewards or penalties into the rewards or penalties suffer by the dictator. For example, a president or prime minister should have his/her personal wealth link to the wellbeing of society, so by looking for us he will be looking for himself. However, a rule this utopic will never make it into law. A secondary, and more plausible idea is to generate a social mandate to the dictator describing our preferences. Think of this as a will describing what to do in case we fall into coma. Hence, the dictator will not be free to maximize its own preferences.  

 

It is perhaps too late to determine a mandate of preferences for the Covid-19, but as Bill Gates predicted an event of this nature was coming in 2014, others will come, and we as a society need to define what are our social preferences in face of bad scenarios. This is hard and unpleasant work, no one wants to think about what to do in such cases. However, not to do so is leaving our fate in the hands of leader’s personal opinions, and some of those could cost us dearly.

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*Note: A dictator is defined as a person that by chance or by design can decide the fate of the whole group.