This past Sunday, I decided to dust off the 'halloweekend' cobwebs by going to Memorial Gym for a workout, and I saw something that made the Public Choice alarm bells in my head go off.
As we all know, UVA has made the decision to continue the policy of forcing masks to be worn inside university buildings for the rest of the semester. This affects me most in classroom and gym settings, and without going into my personal feelings, the low COVID case count in the student population combined with the high rate of vaccination is leading many students to feel like the policy is unnecessary. I go into this because during my time in Mem gym, I noticed that around a third of the students working out were deliberately wearing masks improperly, and some were not wearing them at all and were not being asked to wear them properly by the staff.
I feel that this situation is a prisoner's dilemma, where the use of policing has been effective, but the policing has begun to cease in the latter part of the semester. I feel that this is a prisoner's dilemma because the dominant strategy of individual exercisers leads to a non-pareto-optimal outcome for everyone in the gym. I see not wearing a mask over one's mouth and nose is a dominant strategy for exercise, because the restriction of breath makes exercise more difficult and/or less enjoyable for most people, and not wearing a mask is seen as better than this. However, gym-goers pursuing this dominant strategy all at once creates a non-pareto-optimal situation for everyone, which is creating a greater risk of COVID spread. (The article makes the point that masks are necessary for exercise, as well as that they are inconvenient for vigorous exercise)
The implications of what I observed on Sunday are that policing is necessary to achieve the pareto-optimal result of minimizing COVID spread, and that we consented to this policing by coming to school this year. Due to fatigue, and less COVID on grounds, however, the policing by gym staff has ceased, and the supposed pareto-optimal condition the policy aims to achieve has been lost. I have continued to comply with mask wearing, but if I am to face no consequences by pursuing my dominant strategy, I will gladly work out without my mask, and bring everyone farther from pareto-optimality.
1 comment:
Hi Chris, great post and thanks for sharing. I really enjoyed reading your analysis of the prisoner’s dilemma in this case. However, do you think that we could make the argument that everyone working out without a mask could be the dominate strategy? I mean with the fact that everyone is vaccinated and that COVID cases have been extremely low up to this point at UVA as you pointed out, is everyone better off if everyone wore a mask, given the negative enjoyment effects it has on working out?
I might argue that the prisoner’s dilemma matrix could be shifted around to where the top left box would that everyone not wear masks in order to attain the maximum best workout for everyone. Is everyone not inspired to work harder by the guy benching 450 or running very fast on the treadmill? This person’s workout is quite hampered if they do it in a mask, which then has an effect on everyone in the gym to not work out as strenuously. If instead, you policed people who might think about coming into the gym wearing a mask and told them not to wear a mask because everyone would receive the positive externalities of their maximum effort workout .This type of policing would then shift everyone up to the top left corner of the prisoner’s dilemma matrix.
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