[HN Gopher] Corona Game: A simulation of how Covid-19 spreads
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Corona Game: A simulation of how Covid-19 spreads
Author : pmontra
Score : 60 points
Date : 2021-07-07 17:50 UTC (5 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (koronahra.cz)
(TXT) w3m dump (koronahra.cz)
| [deleted]
| Animats wrote:
| I once considered something like that for AIDS, based on the book
| "Sexual Ecology", by Rotello. A representation of the "gay fast
| lane", people with very high numbers of sexual partners per year
| (> 100) would have been included. You could try various
| strategies - closing bathhouses and bars, mandatory mass testing.
| Now that would have generated hate mail.
| BjoernKW wrote:
| It's beyond me why potential alternatives to lockdowns and
| restrictions in general are hardly ever discussed.
|
| I understand that games like this one have to be based on
| actually available data and models. Still, testing and efficient
| track & trace schemes could be (have been) a huge factor in
| preventing COVID-19 spread.
|
| For example, if everyone took a rapid antigene test twice a day,
| we'd be able to track new infections very quickly and before
| those can spread any further.
|
| If implemented properly, with such a scheme we perhaps could even
| do without any additional measures (other than vaccination, that
| is), incur merely a fraction of the current costs, and still keep
| the numbers of deaths and severe cases much lower than they are
| with the blunt instrument that is blanket lockdowns.
| ianlevesque wrote:
| You think the people refusing to get vaccinated are going to
| take a rapid antigen test?
| BjoernKW wrote:
| Well, those people perhaps aren't happily complying with
| lockdown measures either.
|
| It's a matter of how such a scheme would be implemented. One
| could imagine working with incentives, for example.
|
| Alternatively, being able to produce a valid, up-to-date test
| result at any time could be made mandatory. This might seem
| draconian but it's a lot less so than unending lockdowns and
| the perspective of continued social distancing.
| tbarbugli wrote:
| Rapid tests took long time to reach the market, pandemic was
| already big when they became available at scale. I also think
| most people would not agree with getting tested so often (I
| would not).
|
| Track and trace was introduced and failed in most countries.
| BjoernKW wrote:
| Rapid tests have been available since autumn last year at
| least. They're a lot easier and cheaper to produce than
| vaccines, for example. Producing and supplying them at scale
| is just a matter of demand. Most countries just didn't bother
| to buy them early on.
|
| It's true that getting tested frequently is invasive, quite
| literally so.
|
| We seem to forget to easily, though, that lockdowns and the
| civil rights restrictions that come with them are much more
| invasive (albeit perhaps not that literally in most cases).
| Yet, we still put up with those.
|
| > Track and trace was introduced and failed in most
| countries.
|
| That's because most countries made a half-arsed attempt at
| best, sometimes hampered by largely imaginary privacy
| requirements.
|
| The main concern with the track & trace apps available in the
| EU, for example, was to supposedly comply with GDPR and local
| privacy laws, rather than protecting people from contracting
| and spreading a disease.
|
| This is why these apps were expressly designed to only store
| data in a decentralised fashion, which effectively kept local
| health authorities from using that data to do their job.
|
| The funny thing is: In terms of GDPR, there of course is
| nothing that keeps you from storing such data on a server
| (much less so even, if you're a government agency) as long as
| you have the user's consent and explicitly state how that
| data will be used.
| HellDunkel wrote:
| ,,Hammer and dance" seems to be the best strategy in this game.
| Acceptance of population does not seem to be affected by doing
| so. My worst try was 140k deaths, best 20k. The range seems quite
| extrem- can this be backed by real world data?
| atatatat wrote:
| It's being made as we speak.
| lizhang wrote:
| This feels more like a slideshow than a game - every step in time
| had another popup that paused the game.
| SavantIdiot wrote:
| Not really sure I understand this. If you play it long enough you
| bankrupt your country and the virus always wins. Is that the
| secret message, or do I just not know how to play?
| DiogenesKynikos wrote:
| The way the model is set up, a zero-CoVID strategy is
| impossible. If you close the borders and impose a full lockdown
| on day 1, you still end up getting about 10 cases/day forever
| (I believe this is due to assumptions about imported cases).
|
| There are, however, countries that have achieved zero CoVID and
| then reopened and sustained zero CoVID. But this is only
| possible with strict border quarantine rules, extensive contact
| tracing and immediate mass testing whenever a new case shows
| up.
| lucb1e wrote:
| Can you somehow turn off these _constant_ pop-ups? Literally
| every two seconds a new message pops up about how I 'm doing, how
| many people died in one day (I can see that alright), that it's
| summer (you don't say), that the social stability is dropping
| (that's the number I was looking at, thanks), if maybe I want to
| restart... I spend more time clicking OK yes next next finish
| than playing the game.
| alecst wrote:
| Man, chill the harsh, it's just a game...
| lucb1e wrote:
| hence I'd like to play it :)
|
| If there is a settings panel that I'm missing, that would be
| great. Though I also noticed it's a lot better at lower
| speeds (since the actions are visible with 2 weeks delay I
| had it on fast-forward at first, more arcade style for a
| first run than weigh-and-deliberate style)
| dang wrote:
| " _Please don 't complain about website formatting, back-button
| breakage, and similar annoyances. They're too common to be
| interesting. Exception: when the author is present. Then
| friendly feedback might be helpful._"
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
| mijkal wrote:
| Long before the pandemic, I enjoyed playing Plague (mobile app
| game).
|
| It's surprising accurate with its headlines -- and was quite
| unnerving to live it irl.
|
| And it's educational in the sense that the player must get just
| the right balance of transmission and symptoms before mutating
| ever-increasing lethality before becoming detected to 'win' the
| game (ie kill all humans).
|
| https://www.ndemiccreations.com/en/22-plague-inc
| soperj wrote:
| Unfortunate that it doesn't allow you to get back to zero.
| Various countries have managed to do it, including China with
| hard lock downs.
| kube-system wrote:
| China is not at zero even today. _Literally today_ they imposed
| a lockdown in Ruili due to an outbreak.
| shalmanese wrote:
| a) it was yesterday.
|
| b) getting back to zero does not mean staying at zero. China
| has had long stretches of time with zero reported cases of
| local transmission, punctuated by brief outbreaks like the
| current one.
| DiogenesKynikos wrote:
| And this outbreak currently only affects a single small
| town on the border with Myanmar. The other 1.4 billion
| people are still going about their daily lives.
| soperj wrote:
| How does that negate anything that I said?
| genericpenguin wrote:
| It doesn't. I was also disappointed by this. I'm in
| Australia and we kept our numbers low by locking down hard
| and early and distinguishing between community transmission
| and infection via incoming travellers. We did often hit
| long periods of no community transmission and only had
| outbreaks due to breaches in protocol or sloppiness by some
| people's part.
| helge9210 wrote:
| Nice simulator.
|
| Did nothing. Costs within a budget. Zero days of school lost.
| Only 150k dead for 15M infections (~1%).
| pedrosorio wrote:
| You get a little scatterplot at the end of the simulation, your
| result as the bottom right (the "do nothing option") kills 1.4%
| of the population.
|
| https://imgur.com/nK3wwjv
|
| I managed to keep costs somewhat low with a total of 2300
| deaths.
| SonicScrub wrote:
| 150k dead in the entirety of the small nation of Czechia.
| Yikes, that's a lot. I would not use the modifier "only" to
| describe that death toll. That's 1.4% of the nation's
| population. For context, that's about 43% of the total WW2
| deaths of that nation done in a fraction of the time. I hope
| the "costs within budget" was worth that.
| anoncake wrote:
| No, that's not a lot. It's only 1%. Much less than the cost
| of lockdowns. Obviously less than 150% of the population gets
| infected in real life.
| barbazoo wrote:
| > No, that's not a lot. It's only 1%. Much less than the
| cost of lockdowns.
|
| Apart from the fact that I can't fathom how you could say
| that 1% of an entire country's population is "not a lot",
| do you have a source for how many people died as "cost of
| lockdowns"? I see this being regurgitated a lot but I doubt
| that more people died due to lockdowns/restrictions than
| from Covid19 itself.
| rsj_hn wrote:
| Please cite a source for 150K, as that's pretty outlandish.
| Official government data is 30,311 dead here:
| https://onemocneni-aktualne.mzcr.cz/covid-19
|
| The czech republic, in general, has below average respiratory
| outcomes due to higher than average levels of smoking and
| historically high levels of air pollution under communism
| (they burned brown coal), as well as an older population (1%
| of the population experiences acute respiratory infections
| each year). But all of these factors are improving, with
| cleaner air, declining smoking rates, etc.
| pedrosorio wrote:
| > Please cite a source for 150K
|
| Read the parent of the comment you responded to.
| SonicScrub wrote:
| I think you're very confused on the context of my comment.
| The link that this thread goes to is a simulator that
| mimics controlling COVID spread in the Czech Republic based
| on player-controlled government initiatives. I'm replying
| to someone who said they got 150k deaths in the game. My
| comment has nothing to do with real world COVID numbers in
| the Czech Republic.
| gus_massa wrote:
| Go to https://ourworldindata.org/explorers/coronavirus-
| data-explor... and sort by total death.
|
| In the first position is Peru with ~6000 death/million.
| After that there are a bunch of countries with ~3000
| death/million including Czechia. And then the number goes
| down.
|
| Czechia has ~11000000 habitants, so 150K/11M is like ~13000
| death/million that is the double of the current country
| with more death/million and like four time bigger than the
| other countries.
| whoomp12342 wrote:
| 15M infections means 15M people of potentially life altering
| conditions. It could be worse than death
| anoncake wrote:
| There is still no evidence for that.
| TheGigaChad wrote:
| You are already brain damaged, so no need to worry about that
| condition because of covid.
| [deleted]
| nayuki wrote:
| Previous thread of this same game from 3 hours earlier:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27761279
| spywaregorilla wrote:
| I enjoyed this a lot.
|
| One decent strat to explore was just turning on extra comp and
| nothing else. Social stability tended to stay at the max. 141k
| people died. Knowing how strong this is, you can just buy your
| way out of almost any upset with other choices for a relatively
| marginal increase in costs.
|
| A couple things I didn't understand:
|
| * My immune numbers started to go down at some point. Why?
|
| * How many people are there? The game suggests 10 million, but
| near the end it suggested there could have been 14 million people
| infected. I wonder if this game just uses an exponential model
| under its hood rather than something logarithmic.
|
| * Can the vaccine pr ever work out favorably? Seems like it
| doesn't.
| pedrosorio wrote:
| > My immune numbers started to go down at some point. Why?
|
| The methodology page [0] explains resistant people eventually
| become susceptible to infection again.
|
| > but near the end it suggested there could have been 14
| million people infected
|
| Since the game is tracking total number of infections, rather
| than people infected, and since infected people can become
| susceptible again, that would explain the #infections > total
| population.
|
| [0] https://koronahra.cz/about
| csours wrote:
| It's interesting that the game contrasts Voluntary and
| Involuntary Participation in pandemic counter-measures. At the
| extremes, everything is either voluntary or involuntary, but in
| real life, people are making decisions all the time based on the
| conditions they see; enforcement of government orders is only one
| of those conditions.
| csours wrote:
| If I had a wish for the game, it would be to better show the
| lag between 3 things - Actual Infections, Test Positivity
| Rates, and Mortality.
|
| In the US, there is now evidence that community spread was
| occuring much earlier than initially thought - we didn't know
| about infections because test were unavailable. Also, you will
| only ever learn about infections after people get tested.
|
| Hospitalizations trail infection by 1-3 weeks, and death is 1-3
| weeks after that.
|
| The decisions you made 2 months ago show up in mortality 'now'
|
| Add to that, the number of times where authorities went back
| and fixed the numbers. For a long time, there were not concrete
| numbers; in many cases the number of fatalities may never be
| known or agreed upon.
| gus_massa wrote:
| I think the idea is that you should take decision with
| incomplete data. Perhaps it would be interesting to show in
| the closing screen all the additional information.
| inglor_cz wrote:
| Wow, the author, Michal Benes, was my colleague at the
| Mathematical-Physical Faculty. We were (well, I hope I can say
| _are_ ) on good terms. He later specialized in analysis, I in
| algebra.
|
| A funny fellow with a knack for understanding society at large.
| spywaregorilla wrote:
| Has anyone published studies on hospital capacity vs. mortality
| rate during covid? I tried to find that at the beginning but
| couldn't find anything.
|
| I've always suspected claims that overcapacity hospitals
| drastically increasing the mortality rate are not supported by
| data. Obviously if more people have covid, more people will die
| from covid, but normalized to the number of people that had the
| disease.
| desine wrote:
| There is one study I know of that found a "weak positive
| correlation" between number of ICU beds and mortality, no
| correlation between number of general beds and mortality:
|
| https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7685049/
|
| There was a lot of misinformation and confusing data at the
| start of the pandemic regarding hospital beds. Here in the US,
| hospitals tend to operate near capacity as SOP - a result of
| for profit healthcare seeking max profitability. Most hospitals
| here also started reserving a percentage of their beds, both
| ICU and general care, for covid patients. These reserved but
| sometimes unoccupied beds were not factored in when local
| hospitals reported being at capacity - so a local radio station
| might say "these local hospitals are at max capacity" without
| reporting that they still have 5% beds free specifically for
| covid patients. I suspect this may have caused some deaths by
| people not seeking care because they thought it wasn't
| available when it was, however I haven't seen anything to
| validate that hypothesis (and I doubt there will ever be any
| data).
|
| One interesting sidenote is that the military hospitals that
| President Trump rolled out while he was still in charge had
| very little effect:
|
| https://www.npr.org/2020/05/07/851712311/u-s-field-hospitals...
| spywaregorilla wrote:
| I think this is part of it. Most locations did not actually
| experience hospital demand above capacity for long, if at
| all. Probably in large part due to the effectiveness of
| lockdowns.
| pacbard wrote:
| I wouldn't really trust correlational studies that link
| hospital capacity and mortality rate during covid. You want to
| look for causal studies that try to isolate variation in
| hospital capacity using some sort of instrument to get to a
| causal estimate of the increase in capacity on mortality. A lot
| was going on during the covid pandemic that was probably
| correlating with hospital overcapacity that will bias the
| estimates from a correlational study.
|
| Out of curiosity, which mechanism are you thinking about that
| would lead you to the conclusion that hospital capacity doesn't
| impact mortality? The story that I have heard the most is that
| hospitals start to turn away people if they don't have beds
| from them, leading to either delay in care or no care at all.
| Both delay or no care lead to higher mortality. I cannot really
| think of a story where an over-capacity hospital leads to the
| same or reduced mortality.
|
| If you believe that hospital closures lead to hospital
| overcapacity or delays in care, you can find some literature
| that shows that closing hospitals leads to an increase in
| mortality in the community [1].
|
| 1: https://www.nber.org/papers/w26182
| spywaregorilla wrote:
| > Out of curiosity, which mechanism are you thinking about
| that would lead you to the conclusion that hospital capacity
| doesn't impact mortality?
|
| First, it's that hospitals effect on covid mortality is lower
| than believed. Second, while morbid, I assume mortality risk
| can be assessed pretty accurately by hospital staff. If you
| must triage, triaging someone who has a 99% chance of dying
| in the hospital and a 100% chance of dying outside the
| hospital raises the expected deaths by 0.01. Hospitals tend
| to serve everyone they can (for good reason) but the value
| add part comes from serving people who have a high chance of
| dying out of the hospital AND a relatively low chance of
| dying in the hospital.
|
| These could be wildly wrong assumptions.
|
| I would think hospital closures would cause a large increase
| in mortality rates as you don't get to triage effectively at
| that point.
| desine wrote:
| >I cannot really think of a story where an over-capacity
| hospital leads to the same or reduced mortality.
|
| I think the emphasis on ventilators at the beginning of the
| pandemic likely caused an increase in mortality in
| hospitalized patients. At peak panic, there was a big push to
| create and distribute ventilators, including open source
| projects, big name tech billionaires dedicating resources,
| etc. Then we realized these were actually damaging lungs
| further, and nixed that treatment, switching to oxygen
| supplementation only.
| jdavis703 wrote:
| I'm not sure which country's "peak" you're referring to,
| but in the US the peak was over Q4 2020 to Q1 2021. By this
| point doctors had already realized the issues with
| ventilators.
| desine wrote:
| Peak cases != Peak panic
| gus_massa wrote:
| You can switch to English with the button on the top right.
|
| Edit: It would be interesting that the site remember all the
| previous tries. I finally was able to avoid saturating the
| hospitals, but I don't remember how the other metrics compare
| with my previous tries.
|
| Edit: Removed the link to the "version in English" because my
| link does not change the language.
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