Game theorists think from the end, also in the pandemic. It was always clear that the first phase of the vaccination campaign must protect the particularly vulnerable in society, but the real challenge lies in the endgame – the question of how to achieve a vaccination rate of 85 to 90 percent among adults in view of the vaccination skepticism in Germany can reach.
Ten months ago, behavioral economists could have made a valuable contribution to how the government could have set effective vaccination incentives in the population with the help of “nudging” without having to exert pressure or even coercion. With the end of summer and incidences of more than 1000 in the group of the unvaccinated, however, the train has left to increase the vaccination rate with gentle, primarily voluntary measures. Unfortunately, only the heavy equipment helps now.
In order to be able to develop tailor-made and targeted measures, it helps to look at the unvaccinated and their respective motives and motivations. Roughly speaking, there are three dominant groups: First, there are the ideological opponents of vaccination. These include conspiracy theorists, obscure “healers”, but also the bridge engineer Dr. So-and-so, who thinks he is more familiar with mRNA vaccines than the concentrated global community of virologists. You cannot reach these people anyway and as long as you are not prepared to introduce a general vaccination requirement and to enforce it with appropriate measures, you should leave this group alone. Specifically, this also means saving yourself the moral index finger in order not to divide society further.
The second group are the vaccine-skeptical but unideological self-optimizers and egoists. For them, the difference between “vaccinated” and “not vaccinated” only has to be big enough for their personal lifestyle and leisure activities, then many of them will still be vaccinated. So: all non-essential shops, restaurants, hairdressers, fitness centers, sporting events, skiing, buses, trains, planes, workplaces and trips abroad must be subject to the 2G rule (and as long as there is a “fire” even the 2G plus rule) until a sufficient one Vaccination rate is achieved; the personal desire for the next Mallorca trip will do its part to overcome the skepticism.
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The third and most exciting group is that of those who make decisions and act. I call them the “procrastinates”. In autumn, surveys assumed that one to two thirds of those who had not been vaccinated were actually latently positive about the COVID vaccination, but they “had a few more questions”, “hadn’t gotten around to it yet”, or “saw no urgency because of their young age “. These people would actually be the easiest to attract.
In their entirety, they are reminiscent of the phenomenon of apparent irrationality in organ donation. In countries where you have to actively decide to be a potential donor, such as in Germany, only around 10 to 20 percent of the population have an organ donor card. In countries where you are automatically a donor, unless you actively vote against it, around 80 percent of the population are possible organ donors. This difference can only be explained by the sluggishness of people in making decisions.
Overcoming the indolence of the unvaccinated
How can you make use of this knowledge and get those who are latently willing to vaccinate to act? As COVID incidences rose again, the new 2G and 3G rules came in a drop at a time in our federal system. There was no drastic date, no “Big Bang” that would have roused all decision-making people and forced them to finally take the decisive step and get vaccinated.
A few weeks ago I gave an interview to a Hamburg news magazine in which I suggested, among other things, that from a certain point in time – not immediately but, for example, from January 15 – there should be a clear right of way for vaccinated people in hospitals, as soon as not more sufficient intensive capacities are available.
Marcus Schreiber is a founding partner and Chief Executive Officer at TWS Partners. He has many years of experience in strategic purchasing and broad industry know-how. His focus is on strategic purchasing, applied industrial economics and market design. He also supports companies in applying game theory knowledge in complex awarding decisions.
To be very clear: I want everyone, including everyone who has not been vaccinated, to receive the best possible care. Nobody should be punished for their attitude or decision. And of course, ultimately medical professionals have to assess the chances of survival of the patients who come to their ward.
But if more patients have to fight for survival than there are free intensive care beds available, there should and must be clear regulations one way or another – and a vaccinated person has at least one moral argument in this case, but also medically the better prognosis with two otherwise identical ones Patient.
I am ready to fight argumentatively for my position, if necessary, to give priority to vaccinated persons in the intensive care units – I think it hits a nerve for a large part of the population. At least nobody has contradicted me in direct conversations. In contrast to logical questions, however, there are hardly any absolute truths in ethical questions. So I fully accept that one can ethically have a different point of view.
If the legislature created the legal requirement for such a triage regulation at a time when intensive care units were overflowing, it would at least be clear to the last hesitant that it is now time to make a decision. As a game theorist, my aim is to create an announcement effect – a “big bang” – that finally gets the “decision-makers” to get vaccinated.
The echo, the massive shit storm on the net and a lot of contradiction in classic media at my suggestion have shown that it fulfills exactly this purpose in the best possible way. And a sufficient period of time would give everyone the chance to avoid such a triage rule by vaccination.
When in doubt, no space in the intensive care unit? The elegant thing about this proposal is that, ideally, so many would be encouraged to vaccinate that the bottlenecks in the clinics would be eliminated by a quasi-herd immunity before the deadline, so that the entire regulation itself would then be obsolete again.
Since it is now an epidemic of the unvaccinated and precisely these unvaccinated people end up in the intensive care unit at a disproportionately high rate, nobody benefits from this idea more than the supposedly disadvantaged – the unvaccinated!
More: Compulsory vaccination: When, if not now?