  Pandemic response is a complex affair. Most governments employ a set of
quasi-standard measures to fight COVID-19 including wearing masks, social
distancing, virus testing and contact tracing. We argue that some non-trivial
factors behind the varying effectiveness of these measures are selfish
decision-making and the differing national implementations of the response
mechanism. In this paper, through simple games, we show the effect of
individual incentives on the decisions made with respect to wearing masks and
social distancing, and how these may result in a sub-optimal outcome. We also
demonstrate the responsibility of national authorities in designing these games
properly regarding the chosen policies and their influence on the preferred
outcome. We promote a mechanism design approach: it is in the best interest of
every government to carefully balance social good and response costs when
implementing their respective pandemic response mechanism.
