Vaccination in a Large Population: Mean Field Equilibrium Versus Social Optimum

Abstract

We analyze a virus propagation dynamics in a large population of agents (or nodes) with three possible states (Susceptible, Infected, Recovered) where agents may choose to vaccinate. We show that this system admits a unique symmetric equilibrium when the number of agents goes to infinity. We also show that the vaccination strategy that minimizes the social cost has the same threshold structure as the mean field equilibrium, but with a shorter threshold. This implies that, to encourage optimal vaccination behavior, vaccination should always be subsidized.