[HN Gopher] Outbreak - playable simulations of a disease outbreak
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Outbreak - playable simulations of a disease outbreak
Author : gringoDan
Score : 88 points
Date : 2020-03-16 18:59 UTC (4 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (meltingasphalt.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (meltingasphalt.com)
| 40four wrote:
| 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...
|
| _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...
| feanaro wrote:
| What happens once China starts dismantling mitigations
| currently in place, given that the majority of the population
| is still naive to the virus? Is it reasonable to expect they
| can wait out the virus disappearing completely by tracking all
| active cases until they have recovered?
| saberdancer wrote:
| It's probably better to err on the side of caution than the
| alternative.
| xwdv wrote:
| 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)
| wiz21c wrote:
| 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)
| baq wrote:
| when economy shuts down, more people die of malnutrition than
| of the virus.
| JamesBarney wrote:
| School is a bigger issues because children are usually are much
| closer together, are in the same room with far more people, and
| have far more interaction that adults at a typical job.
| etiam wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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
| , 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!
| Swizec wrote:
| Heh I published something very similar this morning. Looks like
| everyone has the same idea
|
| https://reactfordataviz.com/articles/corona-simulation/
| pmontra wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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
| nabla9 wrote:
| 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...
| Ntrails wrote:
| And greenland as I recall? But yeah - thikn the trick was low
| mortality so they took too long to respond
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(page generated 2020-03-16 23:00 UTC)