Posted on 06/15/2025 6:57:41 AM PDT by DoodleBob
When outbreaks of vaccine-preventable diseases such as measles occur despite highly effective vaccines being available, it's easy to conclude that parents who don't vaccinate their children are misguided, selfish or have fallen prey to misinformation.
As professors with expertise in vaccine policy and health economics, we argue that the decision not to vaccinate isn't simply about misinformation or hesitancy.
In our view, it involves game theory, a mathematical framework that helps explain how reasonable people can make choices that collectively lead to outcomes that endanger them.
Game theory reveals that vaccine hesitancy is not a moral failure, but simply the predictable outcome of a system in which individual and collective incentives aren't properly aligned.
Game theory examines how people make decisions when their outcomes depend on what others choose. In his research on the topic, Nobel Prize-winning mathematician John Nash, portrayed in the movie A Beautiful Mind, showed that in many situations, individually rational choices don't automatically create the best outcome for everyone.
Vaccination decisions perfectly illustrate this principle. When a parent decides whether to vaccinate their child against measles, for instance, they weigh the small risk of vaccine side effects against the risks posed by the disease. But here's the crucial insight: The risk of disease depends on what other parents decide.
If nearly everyone vaccinates, herd immunity – essentially, vaccinating enough people – will stop the disease's spread. But once herd immunity is achieved, individual parents may decide that not vaccinating is the less risky option for their kid.
In other words, because of a fundamental tension between individual choice and collective welfare, relying solely on individual choice may not achieve public health goals.
This makes vaccine decisions fundamentally different from most other health decisions. When you decide whether to take medication for high blood pressure, your outcome depends only on your choice. But with vaccines, everyone is connected.
This interconnectedness has played out dramatically in Texas, where the largest U.S. measles outbreak in a decade originated. As vaccination rates dropped in certain communities, the disease – once declared eliminated in the U.S. – returned.
One county's vaccination rate fell from 96% to 81% over just five years. Considering that about 95% of people in a community must be vaccinated to achieve herd immunity, the decline created perfect conditions for the current outbreak.
This isn't coincidence; it's game theory playing out in real time. When vaccination rates are high, not vaccinating seems rational for each individual family, but when enough families make this choice, collective protection collapses.
This dynamic creates what economists call a free rider problem. When vaccination rates are high, an individual might benefit from herd immunity without accepting even the minimal vaccine risks.
Game theory predicts something surprising: Even with a hypothetically perfect vaccine – faultless efficacy, zero side effects – voluntary vaccination programs will never achieve 100% coverage. Once coverage is high enough, some rational individuals will always choose to be free riders, benefiting from the herd immunity provided by others.
And when rates drop – as they have, dramatically, over the past five years – disease models predict exactly what we're seeing: the return of outbreaks.
Game theory reveals another pattern: For highly contagious diseases, vaccination rates tend to decline rapidly following safety concerns, while recovery occurs much more slowly.
This, too, is a mathematical property of the system because decline and recovery have different incentive structures. When safety concerns arise, many parents get worried at the same time and stop vaccinating, causing vaccination rates to drop quickly.
But recovery is slower because it requires both rebuilding trust and overcoming the free rider problem – each parent waits for others to vaccinate first. Small changes in perception can cause large shifts in behavior.
Media coverage, social networks and health messaging all influence these perceptions, potentially moving communities toward or away from these critical thresholds.
Mathematics also predicts how people's decisions about vaccination can cluster. As parents observe others' choices, local norms develop – so the more parents skip the vaccine in a community, the more others are likely to follow suit.
Game theorists refer to the resulting pockets of low vaccine uptake as susceptibility clusters. These clusters allow diseases to persist even when overall vaccination rates appear adequate.
A 95% statewide or national average could mean uniform vaccine coverage, which would prevent outbreaks. Alternatively, it could mean some areas with near-100% coverage and others with dangerously low rates that enable local outbreaks.
What's more, blaming parents for making selfish choices can also backfire by making them more defensive and less likely to reconsider their views.
Much more helpful would be approaches that acknowledge the tensions between individual and collective interests and that work with, rather than against, the mental calculations informing how people make decisions in interconnected systems.
Research shows that communities experiencing outbreaks respond differently to messaging that frames vaccination as a community problem versus messaging that implies moral failure.
In a 2021 study of a community with falling vaccination rates, approaches that acknowledged parents' genuine concerns while emphasizing the need for community protection made parents 24% more likely to consider vaccinating, while approaches that emphasized personal responsibility or implied selfishness actually decreased their willingness to consider it.
This confirms what game theory predicts: When people feel their decision-making is under moral attack, they often become more entrenched in their positions rather than more open to change.
Understanding how people weigh vaccine risks and benefits points to better approaches to communication. For example, clearly conveying risks can help: The 1-in-500 death rate from measles far outweighs the extraordinarily rare serious vaccine side effects.
That may sound obvious, but it's often missing from public discussion. Also, different communities need different approaches – high-vaccination areas need help staying on track, while low-vaccination areas need trust rebuilt.
Consistency matters tremendously. Research shows that when health experts give conflicting information or change their message, people become more suspicious and decide to hold off on vaccines. And dramatic scare tactics about disease can backfire by pushing people toward extreme positions.
When parents understand that vaccination protects vulnerable community members, like infants too young for vaccines or people with medical conditions, it helps bridge the gap between individual and collective interests.
Health care providers remain the most trusted source of vaccine information. When providers understand game theory dynamics, they can address parents' concerns more effectively, recognizing that for most people, hesitancy comes from weighing risks rather than opposing vaccines outright.
The Game Theory approach to this subject is interesting. To be sure, I suspect some folks make decisions as such. For example, many people drive over the speed limit because the assessed risk of getting caught is shrunk by everyone speeding, eg they can’t stop ALL of us.
However, the reality in parenthood is that (for the most part) EVERYTHING is anchored to individualism and not collectivism. I never met a parent who said “I want my kid to get vaxxed because it’ll help the community.”
At the edges, there may be a collective dimension to parenting/child activities, eg joining an Eagle Scout project to clean up a park. Even then, Johnny accumulates hours to help him Rank-up.
Thus, this article - aside from being propaganda - totally misses the parental objective function. As such, despite the interesting intellectual element, the article fails in a most fundamental, basic level.
At least they’re not calling us names. We still find them tedious and boring though.
Trust is a hard thing to win back, once it is lost.
Not arguing in good faith: This specious argument presupposes that the parents are aware of when "herd immunity" is achieved.
Regards,
Unlike some here, I thought this article was pretty good . . . for the first half. Game theory and the “free rider problem” offer useful insights into many areas of human behavior. I liked seeing how these can be applied to vaccinations.
However, the last part of the piece totally exposes the arrogance and ultimate goals of folks like the author. Be wary of same!
I trust science as an approach to uncovering the truth. I don't support ideologues trying to claim that they are the representatives of scientific truth.
Y. TONY YANG & AVI DOR. These are both pro-lockdown, pro-vax boobs. What is the point?
Game theory my butt.. more line mass invasion of turd world.
Communism meets medicine.
Yes, that little half-sentence jumped out at me, too!
They should be required to define what they mean by "properly aligned."
Nice when your ideological opponents make it so easy for you to see through their lies, though!
Regards,
This screed is pretty good. But, Newtonian physics wasn’t
“wrong.” Newton’s laws of motion, without relativistic corrections are the basis for most engineering these days. They are perfectly good within the bounds of accuracy needed for things where velocities don’t approach the velocity of light.
My own doctor - who graduated first in her class from medical school - refuses to vaccinate her own kids. She had to shop around for a school that would accept them (she found one).
The thing about HPV is that you can’t predict or prevent her from being the victim of a sex crime that could result in an infection that results in cancer decades later.
Bonus for my kids is that it cleared a bunch of regular warts (farm kids)
HPV is a wart virus. Other types of warts are spread by contact and some people are more susceptible than others.
If your kid is wart prone, get the vax earlier rather than later.
Think of it as an anti cancer vaccine instead of an std vaccine.
I trust real science (but hold Einstein described skepticism, of course). It’s government ‘science’ that I hold in disbelief.
And here I thought that herd immunity could be achieved by natural selection. The weak died off and the ones who fought off diseases naturally wound up resistant.
This article would have a lot of validity IF the risk and ineffectiveness of some of these vaccines had not been coming to light.
Also, the entire argument will never hold water until they are willing to admit that the covid shot isn’t, and never was, a vaccine.
The insane CDC vax schedule is another reason. 21 by the age of 6 months? NUTS.
How about the abject panic by big pharm and the backers at the new policy of actual scientific testing and trials before unleashing them on us? That’s a big tell.
No more immunity for the makers who can’t see fit to even properly test their drugs.
Vaccines, a great idea until the criminal manufacturers and their partners in a corrupt bureaucracy took over.
So in your case it makes more sense to get it.
Obviously, anything can happen. I’d say the risk of rape is about as low as the risk of the tongue in cheek 8yo whore I mentioned.
There are about 120 types of HPV, of which about 6 lead to cancer, cervical cancer being the most common. Oral/neck cancers next.
It all comes down to risk assessment for me with the foundational recognition that there are no guarantees on either side of the equation.
the entire premise of the posted article is that it’s 100% irrational to avoid vaccination, which then proceeds to “prove” that assertion with thousands of words of pseudo-scientific gobbledygook ...
however, not a single word that, for example, influenza vaccines, essentially don’t work, and not a single word that the government agencies tasked with vaccine safety have blatantly lied so many times that they are no longer trusted by vast swaths of intelligent people who are capable of doing their own research and using their own eyes to see the horror caused by the covid vax to themselves, their families, relatives, friends and neighbors ...
“Trust is a hard thing to win back, once it is lost.”
once bit, twice shy ...
Alluded to, but not stressed enough is the medical establishment lying for profit and due to political pressure.
Note, I am not generally an anti-vaxxer.
“allowing millions of unvetted, unvaccinated illegal aliens into our country a much larger influencer of herd immunity”
That is exactly how I knew “science” was lying about vaccines.
If they believed what they said the border would have been sealed tight.
I watch what “experts” do—and ignore what they say.
—
Another example—”experts” on “climate change” warning about rising oceans while living in luxury in coastal areas.
I think you are underestimating the risk of rape or sexual molestation.
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