I would agree with 1., yeah. Generally a disease that doesn’t transmit during the “dormat” period would not be much different from a disease that is very acute.
I think “mild acute illness that lays dormat and comes back later” can blur the lines a bit. Say, if we have a disease similar to HIV that causes flu-like illness in the acute phase and was highly infectious at point of time (but doesn’t show up to be a serious illness until much later and wasn’t transmissive during the dormat period) would probably make the non-transmissive dormat period relevant for our responses.
I’m the most curious of 2...I know it is unlikely for herpes/EBV/measles to kill someone after they recover from an acute infection, but I wonder if a very different virus could cause “serious illness later in life” in a larger proportion of people, without being significantly more deadly in the acute phase.
--Which, I would call it “the plague inc. winning disease”, since the easiest winning strategy of PI was to infect as many people as possible before bringing in the serious symptoms that kill...It is of course impossible for a disease to “mutate” serious symptoms in every infected person simultaneously, but what if it already has a “delayed payload” built in, when it’s spreading uncontrolled...
And maybe this is a particular scenario to watch out for when considering possible engineered pathogens.
Glad to find another Plague Inc fan. I think in the vast majority of cases, that winning strategy only works in the game, because symptoms are directly related to viral replication and the immune system’s response to viral replication.
You’re right that when we’re talking about engineered pandemics this is something to keep an eye out for, but luckily our immune systems are very good at keeping their eyes out
I do think what Plague Inc is doing..is far from a simulation of an infectious disease...
The pathogen in PI receives “updates” from a handler, and cannot be cleared from a host without intervention (nobody in PI recovers from the pathogen unless a cure is distributed). This reminds me more about computer malware than any biological agent...
I would agree with 1., yeah. Generally a disease that doesn’t transmit during the “dormat” period would not be much different from a disease that is very acute.
I think “mild acute illness that lays dormat and comes back later” can blur the lines a bit. Say, if we have a disease similar to HIV that causes flu-like illness in the acute phase and was highly infectious at point of time (but doesn’t show up to be a serious illness until much later and wasn’t transmissive during the dormat period) would probably make the non-transmissive dormat period relevant for our responses.
I’m the most curious of 2...I know it is unlikely for herpes/EBV/measles to kill someone after they recover from an acute infection, but I wonder if a very different virus could cause “serious illness later in life” in a larger proportion of people, without being significantly more deadly in the acute phase.
--Which, I would call it “the plague inc. winning disease”, since the easiest winning strategy of PI was to infect as many people as possible before bringing in the serious symptoms that kill...It is of course impossible for a disease to “mutate” serious symptoms in every infected person simultaneously, but what if it already has a “delayed payload” built in, when it’s spreading uncontrolled...
And maybe this is a particular scenario to watch out for when considering possible engineered pathogens.
Glad to find another Plague Inc fan. I think in the vast majority of cases, that winning strategy only works in the game, because symptoms are directly related to viral replication and the immune system’s response to viral replication.
You’re right that when we’re talking about engineered pandemics this is something to keep an eye out for, but luckily our immune systems are very good at keeping their eyes out
I do think what Plague Inc is doing..is far from a simulation of an infectious disease...
The pathogen in PI receives “updates” from a handler, and cannot be cleared from a host without intervention (nobody in PI recovers from the pathogen unless a cure is distributed). This reminds me more about computer malware than any biological agent...