This is typical game theory: epidemiologists and other authorities care about the collective outcome (reducing the # of deaths, the economy, PPE for medical wor

This is typical game theory: epidemiologists and other authorities care about the collective outcome (reducing the # of deaths, the economy, PPE for medical workers etc) while individuals mostly care about their own safety, and those goals aren't always aligned. This is why it’s not necessarily wise to listen to their “advice” of not wearing masks or keep going to work, because they’re optimizing for different things than you should do for yourself. For example, look at the disastrous “herd immunity” experiments that countries like the UK and the Netherlands are trying to conduct at the cost of many lives.