Tag: coronavirus

Review of Pandemic (The Game)

I bought this award-winning board game about three years ago not guessing how relevant it would become. Now that many of us are sheltering in place from COVID19, what could be better than a science-based game where the goal is to cooperate in order to defeat life-threatening viruses!

The game is designed to mimic the behavior of contagious diseases which if left unchecked kill thousands of people (sound familiar?). There are several mechanisms to spread germs from one locale to another. Individual cities can become quickly overwhelmed (“outbreaks” in the game’s terminology). Outbreaks add to a “burden of disease” tracker on the side of the board. If you reach the final skull-and-crossbones–it’s game over!

source:@thatbgshow

The game unfolds quickly by drawing “infection” cards with names of cities onto which you place infection markers (small colored cubes). Several events can occur that will accelerate these infections to the point they become outbreaks (as outlined above).

Pushing back on this process is the actual game play. Each player has a special role (medic, researcher, etc.) with special abilities. Unlike most games the point is to maximize the benefit for everyone. This leads to discussion and cooperative problem-solving.

Pandemic is appropriate for older children, works best with four players, and takes less than an hour to complete.

Thoughts on the Approaching COVID19 Pandemic

source:nytimes.com (click to enlarge)

I’ve annotated this NY Times graphic, rounding the estimates for COVID19 (aka the 2019 novel coronavirus) to 2% mortality and 2 people infected for every one who has the disease. What this suggests is the infection rate will be similar to a bad cold season, but unlike the common cold, a significant number of people will die of the disease.

This is not good news, but it is also not catastrophic.

By comparison the 1918 “Spanish” Flu had a similar infection rate but killed 1 in 10! The 1918 Flu infected approximately one third of ALL the people on earth… and that was before air travel!

Based on these numbers alone, up to 110 million people in the US could be infected. 80% of these cases should be mild, 20% will need some form of special care in hospitals or at home, and 2% (2.2 million) could die.

One area where the 1918 Flu differs from COVID19 is the latter does not seem to kill children, which is a small bright spot. However, children may be a source of infection for vulnerable adults!

Note that the currently reported mortality rate is over 3% but here in the US we have done almost NO testing, so the total number of infected individuals is unknown, but likely to be much higher. This means the reported mortality rate is probably inflated due to lack of good data. I’ll stick with 2% as a conservative figure for now.

It is also important to remember one of the lessons of the 1918 epidemic, things may look better when warmer weather returns but this should not be reassuring. In the spring of 1918 it looked like the disease was weakening, but it returned with a vengeance in the fall and winter!

Social Isolation and Hand Washing

For the general public, not living with or caring for a sick person, wearing masks really doesn’t help. Social isolation (eg, staying home) and effective hand washing remain the best things you can do to prevent getting most viral respiratory diseases (the common cold, influenza, and the new coronavirus). Just being in the same room with a sick person is not that risky, but touching surfaces and objects in that room and then touching your face is a good way to catch one of these viruses. Note that hand washing studies suggest we generally neglect our fingertips (including the nails) and wrists.

The best information available comes from CDC and WHO (which I consider the best source since it is not caught up in US political shenanigans). For up-to-date worldwide information download the most recent WHO Situation Report.