Sharks, squalene and COVID vaccines - When a scarce renewable resource becomes strategic in short run

Speaker(s)

Agnieszka Wiszniewska-Matyszkiel

Affiliation

MIMU UW

Date

March 2, 2022, 12:15 p.m.

Room

room 4060

Seminar

Seminar of Biomathematics and Game Theory Group

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I will talk about the joint work with Rajani Singh. We model the problem of ''the tragedy of the commons'' in the context of COVID-19 vaccines with adjuvants based on squalene obtained from endangered deep-sea shark species and it has a compound dynamic game form taking into account various participants of the squalene market.
The game describes a market consisting of pharmaceutical, cosmetic and fishing sector, in presence of a regulatory institution. We calculate Nash and Stackelberg equilibria in which COVID-19 vaccine producers do not take into account their influence on the population of sharks and we discuss the consequences of relaxing this assumption. ''The tragedy of the commons'' in those cases results in endangering of the vaccination programme: either because of depletion of the shark population or its reduction to a level at which the cost of squalene production exceeds the maximal price that can be paid for it. 
Various remedies that can be used by the regulating agency are  suggested.

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