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Corona Game

koronahra.cz

1–10 of 32 posts

Re: Corona Game

#3
"Masks, hands, distancing" somehow costs 498B? Luckily, after a spike of 200k cases a day for a couple of months, it seems most of the population dies or becomes immune, with 3.6M infections (14M including reinfections) and 200K dead by simulation end. Doing the bare minimum and letting the weak die on the streets led to a pretty decent life for the survivors.

Re: Corona Game

#4

"Masks, hands, distancing" somehow costs 498B? Luckily, after a spike of 200k cases a day for a couple of months, it seems most of the population dies or becomes immune, with 3.6M infections (14M including reinfections) and 200K dead by simulation end. Doing the bare minimum and letting the weak die on the streets led to a pretty decent life for the survivors.

According to the description of their economic model, "masks, hands, distancing" is a free option: https://koronahra.cz/about If you didn't do anything else, the 498B must be hospitalization costs. (Letting the weak die on the streets isn't an option, they'll go to the hospital and cost you.)

Re: Corona Game

#5
I don't like how there is no option for, "spend billions of dollars on buying enough rapid Covid tests to test every man, woman, and child in the country every single day". Given that rapid Covid tests cost about $5 a piece, this should be an economically feasible option that should be able to sharply reduce the spread of illness. Its too bad that nobody tried it in real life, or we would be able to see if it works.

Re: Corona Game

#6
How about an option for the masses to do their own research on treatments and realize that vitamin c, d, and zinc are good enough for prevention of covid.

Re: Corona Game

#7
My takeaway: If you don't actually care about the death toll, do nothing until your population is about to rebel, turn on max restrictions until the spike falls, repeat. Minimizes costs, and it is low risk for the ruling class. If only we had handled it that well. Pandemics are great when your problem is a labor surplus.

(hint: this is sarcasm)

Re: Corona Game

#8

The maximal lockdown is way too minimal.

According to the game's about page[1], the model is based on the paper Inferring the effectiveness of government interventions against COVID-19[2]. The maximal lockdown is the combination of all the interventions studied in that paper: limit gatherings to 10 people, close all non-essential businesses, close schools, close universities, and order everyone to stay at home. The only thing more restrictive would be to put everyone under house arrest, which is simply not possible outside of an authoritarian dictatorship.

Moreover, law enforcement isn't perfect at enforcing laws. If you lock down too much for too long, more and more people will ignore the rules. Eventually people will start to protest and rebel. If the government persists, leadership will be removed through impeachment or other methods.

This game (and many other data sources) are discussed in the Astral Codex Ten post Lockdown Effectiveness: Much More Than You Wanted To Know.[3]

1. https://koronahra.cz/about

2. https://sci-hub.st/10.1126/science.abd9338

3. https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/lockdown-effectiveness...

Re: Corona Game

#9

My takeaway: If you don't actually care about the death toll, do nothing until your population is about to rebel, turn on max restrictions until the spike falls, repeat. Minimizes costs, and it is low risk for the ruling class. If only we had handled it that well. Pandemics are great when your problem is a labor surplus. (hint: this is sarcasm)

One strategy I simmed was actually doing nothing -- the sim allows approval to dip to 12%, but then recovers naturally on its own with no intervention. 12% > 0%, so, no need to do anything.

Re: Corona Game

#10

I don't like how there is no option for, "spend billions of dollars on buying enough rapid Covid tests to test every man, woman, and child in the country every single day". Given that rapid Covid tests cost about $5 a piece, this should be an economically feasible option that should be able to sharply reduce the spread of illness. Its too bad that nobody tried it in real life, or we would be able to see if it works.

I would like to have the option to close schools more selectively. In Poland every major surge of cases started roughly 3 weeks after schools were opened. Even if it was just opening of schools just for kids ages 7-9 while they stayed closed for all other kids.

I know it was only few instances and the same relationship doesn't hold for other countries, and also most recent school opening in the summer didn't cause the next wave for the first time. But I think in Poland where we don't party all that much those little unhygienic buggers share way larger portion of the burden than science could establish so far.

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