
Outbreak – playable simulations of a disease outbreak - gringoDan
https://meltingasphalt.com/interactive/outbreak/
======
nabla9
Remember pandemic2 flash game?

It was almost impossible to kill all humans without starting the infection
from Madagascar. If you started from somewhere else Madagascar always had time
to close the borders.

Lo and behold: Madagascar is one of the few countries without infections in
Global Cases tracker.
[https://gisanddata.maps.arcgis.com/apps/opsdashboard/index.h...](https://gisanddata.maps.arcgis.com/apps/opsdashboard/index.html#/bda7594740fd40299423467b48e9ecf6)

~~~
rtkwe
We're also getting another classic part of any Pandemic play through cruise
ships forever circling the ocean looking for a place to dock.

[https://www.cnn.com/travel/article/cruise-transatlantic-
coro...](https://www.cnn.com/travel/article/cruise-transatlantic-coronavirus-
gbr-intl/index.html)

~~~
lostlogin
My favourite cruise ship fiasco this week has been the newly imposed rule in
New Zealand - they can’t dock, go away. So hours before the ban was imposed
one docked and dumped all it’s passengers in the capital.
[https://i.stuff.co.nz/national/health/coronavirus/120298962/...](https://i.stuff.co.nz/national/health/coronavirus/120298962/coronavirus-
cruise-ship-with-with-suspected-infection-misses-wellington)

~~~
TeMPOraL
I got some stern comments that "laws should _never_ apply retroactively" for
saying this, but I still believe: all those border closings should apply
immediately from the second they're announced, and all quarantine requirements
for returning passengers should apply retroactively, from a day or two before
they were announced.

Because the story is the same all over the world. A country announces it'll
close the borders in 2 days. A day after the announcement, every citizen of
that country that was in COVID-19 hotspot returns to their homeland. In some
cases avoiding quarantine.

~~~
Consultant32452
Kind of related problem... A major city becomes an outbreak hot spot. The city
enacts strict quarantine recommendations but they are not enforced by law and
domestic travel is still permitted. People then flee the hot spot city and
rapidly spread disease to other areas. This was a mistake Italy made that the
US is repeating in places like NY, San Francisco, etc.

------
DonHopkins
Bullfrog's classic game "Theme Hospital" had really great emergent vomit
cascades.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y69QTjTvp1w](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y69QTjTvp1w)

~~~
simcop2387
Two Point Hospital does fantastically as a spiritual successor to Theme
Hospital.
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jmlaOYMU8qA](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jmlaOYMU8qA)

~~~
DonHopkins
Cool, thank you! I'll check in and check it out. (Installing it now!) Does it
have a "Bloaty Head" treatment? ;)

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Le_znuXcP2M](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Le_znuXcP2M)

I played a LOT of Theme Hospital when working on The Sims 1, and aspired to
make the Sims editing tools as easy to use and "clicky" as Theme Hospital was.
That and some of Peter Molyneux's older games like Dungeon Keeper, with
architectural editing and a lot of independent characters running around at
the same time, had a lot of influence on The Sims.

------
oceanofsolaris
I am not a huge fan of this (or the WaPo) simulator, since I they seem to have
chosen their models for the nice look (regular grid, bouncing balls) instead
of for their accuracy.

While you can give people a rough idea of how different containment efforts
will work, the models are so far removed from reality that I don't think that
it really helps very much. Especially the WaPos'comparison' between different
containment measures is IMHO borderline negligent without putting huge caveats
in front of them.

~~~
shanusmagnus
Given how much normal people know about these issues (nothing whatsoever, or
even less than nothing, somehow) I think the shortcomings of their model, vs.
full physical simulation, is of no importance. It's a fantastic intuition-
builder.

------
gambler
If we're talking about disease-based games, I highly recommend Pathologic 2.
Nothing realistic there in terms of modeling disease spread or cure mechanics,
it's a very artistic and somewhat abstract game, but it conveys certain social
realities of being in a contagion zone really well. Among other things, it
show the importance of not collectively freaking out.

~~~
feu
I second this recommendation. I'm currently playing through Pathologic 2 for
the first time. Playing through the game in the wider context of a pandemic
makes for a very powerful experience.

------
wiz21c
How can I model the type of interaction between people. For example :is school
a stronger vector of propagation than workplace ?

I ask because everybody in my country talks about what to stop (restaurants,
culture,...) but never explain why working is considered less of a problem...
(I have my little idea but well, ain't sure)

~~~
brigandish
Tell a child to stop touching things and see how many things they touch, where
they put their fingers, how many times they pick their nose etc and then
you'll know.

It'll only take a few minutes.

~~~
Consultant32452
My friend was in an airport recently. A mother dutifully used hand sanitizer
on her 3 year old's hands. Within one minute the child had put their hands on
every surface within a meter: arm rests, seat cushions, under the seat where
the boogers and gum are, the floor, etc.

------
ISNIT
You should totally add this to
[https://coronavirustechhandbook.com/](https://coronavirustechhandbook.com/)

------
boxfire
Super fun: In the full model { 5%, 3%, 5, 3, 0.25, 5, 14 } led to a walking
sprawl of disease in a healthy population that lasted a long time, turning
down the incubation days by 2 made it slower. The rate of new infections
eventually eventually tapered off because the virus encountered its own sprawl
like a growing structure in Go. Seems like a STD.

------
and0rsk
We had a small demo to simulate pandemic outbreak at malls. The simulation was
mostly for demonstration purposes to illustrate how distancing impacts spread,
and potentially some ways to help mitigate it.

[http://socialdistance.ai/](http://socialdistance.ai/)

~~~
paraboul
Much less visual than yours though, I also made a tool to highlight the
exponential effect of social distancing.

Exponential growth is often counter-intuitive and lot of people don't seem to
get it.

[https://www.spreadsim.com/](https://www.spreadsim.com/)

~~~
drited
This is cool but your hospital beds figure needs to be reduced dramatically
because I believe you have taken the number of total hospital beds, not
intensive care beds for the critically ill. In my country, the number of total
beds is about 48 times the number of intensive care beds.

------
xwdv
This is missing a couple things:

1) Cells should have random demographics such as male/female and age, and a
virus could respond differently to them

2) The virus should have some capability for mutation as it spreads.
(probability of changing variables from the initial configuration by some
percent)

------
AlexDanger
Great work. Is the code available to look at? I see its a Creative Commons
license but I cant find a link to a code repo.

------
40four
This stuff drives me crazy. I know the author of this (and of the linked
Washington Post article) are trying to help people gain clarity, but it
worries me that it only serves to accelerate fear and panic.

These articles are making it sound as if the exponential part of the curve
will just continue on forever until it consumes the whole population. The
(self-admittedly) overly simplified simulations aren't helping either.

Front this article >

 _And here 's the kicker: even if we manage to "flatten the curve" enough to
meaningfully space out the case load, we're still positioned to lose millions
and millions of lives._

From the WaPo article >

 _This so-called exponential curve has experts worried. If the number of cases
were to continue to double every three days, there would be about a hundred
million cases in the United States by May._

 _Still, without any measures to slow it down, covid-19 will continue to
spread exponentially for months. To understand why, it is instructive to
simulate the spread of a fake disease through a population._

It will continue to spread exponentially for months!? Millions & millions of
cases & or deaths? These are really sloppy and dangerous ideas to put in
peoples head. They are just plain wrong, and not how pandemics play out in
reality.

Here is what the CDC says about how pandemics spread (Under the 'COVID-19 Now
a Pandemic' heading) [https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/cases-
updates/summ...](https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/cases-
updates/summary.html?CDC_AA_refVal=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.cdc.gov%2Fcoronavirus%2F2019-ncov%2Fsummary.html)

 _Pandemics of respiratory disease follow a certain progression outlined in a
“Pandemic Intervals Framework.” Pandemics begin with an investigation phase,
followed by recognition, initiation, and acceleration phases. The peak of
illnesses occurs at the end of the acceleration phase, which is followed by a
deceleration phase, during which there is a decrease in illnesses. Different
countries can be in different phases of the pandemic at any point in time and
different parts of the same country can also be in different phases of a
pandemic._

 _Different parts of the country are seeing different levels of COVID-19
activity. The United States nationally is currently in the initiation phases,
but states where community spread is occurring are in the acceleration phase.
The duration and severity of each phase can vary depending on the
characteristics of the virus and the public health response._

So no, it will NOT continue exponentially for months. Especially given the
amount of isolation/ quarantine measures and canceling of large events taking
place. I think it is reasonable to expect these measures will help us progress
through to the deceleration phase faster.

Further-more, there is more and more evidence coming out suggesting the in
China where it started, they have already entered the deceleration phase. This
should be encouraging news for us in USA where it is just beginning.

[https://www.aljazeera.com/programmes/newsfeed/2020/03/big-
dr...](https://www.aljazeera.com/programmes/newsfeed/2020/03/big-drop-china-
coronavirus-infections-200316110905999.html)

~~~
svachalek
The CDC link is interesting stuff I haven't read before, but where does it say
the acceleration phase stops before it reaches a significant percentage of the
population? China contained and stopped the virus, it didn't just naturally
decelerate.

~~~
40four
Yeah, that CDC page is one of the best resources I’ve seen. Explains everyone
great detail.

I didn’t mean to make it sound like it happens naturally. I imagine it
probably only happens through human intervention. It just says _” The duration
and severity of each phase can vary depending on the characteristics of the
virus and the public health response._

So, as we are entering the early stages, the public health response in the US
right now is massive. Unlike anything most of us have seen in our lifetime.
Except for the west coast, NYC, and a few others, the spread so far is still
very low. Knowing that, and now seeing China enter deceleration, gives me hope
we will minimize the duration and severity of the outbreak.

But on the other hand, I am more worried about the economic fallout. The
aggressive response with isolation & canceling events, may be necessary, but
it will cause many businesses to fail and many folks to lose their jobs.

~~~
laputan_machine
There is nothing more important than human life.

~~~
Robin_Message
That is certainly true, but the economy is connected to human life, in obvious
(food to eat, medical insurance) and non-obvious ways (e.g. job loss linked to
suicide
[https://www.theguardian.com/society/2015/feb/11/unemployment...](https://www.theguardian.com/society/2015/feb/11/unemployment-
causes-45000-suicides-a-year-worldwide-finds-study) )

So just stopping economic activity also has health downsides.

------
daenz
Very cool. Shouldn't the input transmission rate also be fixed for the last
"test" ? It says to try to flatten the curve to reduce the % dead, but being
able to control the transmission rate is cheating.

------
DonHopkins
One of the first downloadable objects for The Sims 1 was a pet guinea pig,
which literally had a downloadable computer virus.

If you neglected to feed and care for your guinea pig properly, it would bite
you and give you a deadly contagious virus, which you could spread to other
Sims by not following proper hygiene and getting enough rest, and even die
from.

Kids who downloaded the binary Sims object from the internet and installed in
their game were horrified that their beloved Sims dropped dead unexpectedly,
but they learned a useful lesson.

Now deadly infectious guinea pigs are a tradition continued in later versions
of The Sims!

The Sims Pie Menus

[https://medium.com/@donhopkins/the-sims-pie-
menus-49ca02a74d...](https://medium.com/@donhopkins/the-sims-pie-
menus-49ca02a74da3#d06b)

>Viruses

>You can download this guinea pig object, and if you don’t care for it it will
make this secret hidden virus object that gives you a cold, and has with it
the animations and sounds of coughing and going (cough cough).

>Every once in a while it will just interrupt what you do and cough, and it
will be bad for your health. And if you don’t get enough sleep, you have to
get sleep to get rid of it. This little program is literally a virus that runs
and lives in your household and in your characters, and your characters can
spread them to the neighbors, and they’ll bring them home to their families.

>Programmable Plug-In Objects

>Anyway, there’s quite a lot of interesting potential for what new plug-ins
additions can do because of this programming languages.

>SimAntics Visual Programming Language

>There’s a built-in visual programming language called SimAntics, that is a
control flow decision tree type of language. So the “Come and See” object,
we’ll look at that.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-exdu4ETscs&t=12m23s](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-exdu4ETscs&t=12m23s)

Something Is Killing the Sims, and It's No Accident. By John Markoff, April
27, 2000.

[https://www.nytimes.com/2000/04/27/technology/something-
is-k...](https://www.nytimes.com/2000/04/27/technology/something-is-killing-
the-sims-and-it-s-no-accident.html)

Lethal guinea pig kills virtual people

[http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/sci/tech/746700.stm](http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/sci/tech/746700.stm)

The Sims 1: Guinea Pig Disease

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5O5cgXuqhnA](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5O5cgXuqhnA)

The Sims / Illness / Guinea Pig Disease

[https://sims.fandom.com/wiki/Illness](https://sims.fandom.com/wiki/Illness)

How to Get and Treat Guinea Pig Disease

[https://sims-online.com/how-to-get-treat-guinea-pig-disease/](https://sims-
online.com/how-to-get-treat-guinea-pig-disease/)

The Sims 4 My First Pet: SimGuruGraham Talks “Guinea Pig” Disease

[https://simsvip.com/2018/03/07/the-sims-4-my-first-pet-
simgu...](https://simsvip.com/2018/03/07/the-sims-4-my-first-pet-
simgurugraham-talks-guinea-pig-disease/)

~~~
bitwize
A powerful boss in _World of Warcraft_ could afflict the player with a plague
called "Corrupted Blood", which rapidly drained your HP and could spread to
nearby allies. The negative status effect was supposed to apply only in its
zone of origin, but due to the way it was implemented, a player accidentally
spread it outside its containment zone by dismissing and then re-summoning a
pet with the effect, allowing it to spread. All hell broke loose on Azeroth,
as entire cities would be contaminated with Corrupted Blood, and were
subsequently abandoned or avoided by the remaining healthy players. Some
players with healer-class characters would heal their allies and random
strangers until the affliction passed. Others deliberately spread the
affliction as a form of griefing. It was bananas, and epidemiologists used it
as a model for possible human behavior in a real-life plague.

See:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corrupted_Blood_incident](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corrupted_Blood_incident)

------
Swizec
Heh I published something very similar this morning. Looks like everyone has
the same idea

[https://reactfordataviz.com/articles/corona-
simulation/](https://reactfordataviz.com/articles/corona-simulation/)

~~~
pmontra
Interesting simulation but very slow at showing any effect. After 3500+
iterations (several minutes) there were still only 5 deaths in the first
simulator (without distancing), all in the first iterations. I suggest to find
a way to make it clear when it's done or speed it up to get to the point in
one minute max.

~~~
Swizec
That's weird, I get many deaths in just a few iterations. What were you
running on? You seem to have found a bug.

Here's a video of when I run these:
[https://twitter.com/Swizec/status/1239599601537015808](https://twitter.com/Swizec/status/1239599601537015808)

~~~
pedrosorio
Parent is probably referring to the "Covid19 with distancing" simulation.

Some feedback: these are very simplistic simulations and obviously not aiming
for accuracy but please consider changing the default 20% "reinfectability"
parameter.

All evidence and medical knowledge indicates that reports of reinfection are
either:

\- issues with testing (false positives/negatives)

\- extremely rare

[https://www.snopes.com/fact-
check/covid-19-reinfection/](https://www.snopes.com/fact-
check/covid-19-reinfection/)

~~~
hyperpallium
It's scary enough without reinfection. Seems unlikely.

> the 30,000-letter genetic code of the virus changes by one letter every 15
> days [from link]

But could be like the common cold and flu, with new strains each year - but
more contagious and deadly. Even then, we could still have new vaccines each
year, and better treatment methods.

------
olliej
I want to be able to tailor survival rate according to availability of
hospital support - it seems like an obvious thing to include.

e.g. say that there are X hospital beds, and an X% survival rate for critical
patients if they can get a bed.

------
etiam
Anybody know an open source version of something like Plague Inc: Evolved ? I
sure as hell am not playing computer games now. I'm going to get my crisis
preparedness up properly and try to help my community. But it would be an
interesting thing to have for the quarantine phase...

~~~
veeralpatel979
I'm a fan of Plague Inc on iOS and have unlocked all the pathogens...what's
the difference between Plague Inc and Plague Inc Evolved?

Is the latter worth buying and playing?

Also: if there's a design doc out there for Plague Inc or a similar game, I'd
love to see it.

~~~
etiam
Cool. I covered all the pathogens too, though I think I had quite a few genes
left to unlock.

I've never played the original Plague Inc, so I can't tell you the difference
from experience, but according to Wikipedia
([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plague_Inc:_Evolved](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plague_Inc:_Evolved)
, isn't it amazing that it has its own Wikipedia page?):

 _The core game of Plague Inc: Evolved is the same as Plague Inc. - the player
controls a plague which has infected patient zero. The player must infect and
kill the whole world population by evolving the plague and adapting to various
environments. However, there is a time pressure to complete the game before
humans, the opponent, develop a cure for the plague. [...] It also includes
all of the expansion packs from the original Plague Inc. game_

Great game concept, though still with some untapped potential in my opinion. I
keep getting inspired to replay it by the news right now, but we really have
much, much more urgent things to attend to. Prepare, and help out, but stay
safe!

