Gaming the pandemic

One of the ways of creating a model of the decisions states make facing a pandemic is using Confrontation Analysis- the Card game. This views the potential choices as cards in the government hand which can be played or not.

For example, the government can play a card- “mobilise all nursing students and direct them into hospitals to create a pool of reserve nurses!

The factors in this this situation are:

Public confidence in government

Impact on economy

Impact on virus

Each of these are rated +5 (best outcome possible) to -5 (terrible, very bad) 0 = a balance of good and bad.

The card would say “mobilise nursing students”

Public confidence + 2 (the public like the idea of mobilising and fighting the pandemic)

Impact on economy -2 (they will expect to get paid like trained nurses)

Impact on virus + 2 (it would help fight the virus)

For this card, another factor is added- Universities -1 (as they will lose money on the students not being students for a while, if universities are paid for absent students add -1 on to impact on economy as well as being paid, the universities are paid).

The pandemic has stages e.g. Contain, delay, pandemic, recovery. Each stage may have a different score. These are listed in order.

e.g. The card mobilise nursing students looks like this:

public confidence -1\0\+1\+1

Impact on economy -1\-1\-1\-1

Impact on virus 0\+1\+2\+2

Special- Universities -1, if universities paid for absent nurses score is 0 but extra -1 to impact on economy.

It does not take long to generate a whole series of cards that can be used to inform a discussion about what choices governments have at each stage of the pandemic.