Wargaming the Spread of Disease

[LongBlade]

This is a somewhat lengthy article on whether something like a quarantine would work with an outbreak of disease.

The issue comes down to the effectiveness of the spread of disease regardless of whether people were restricted from moving. Seems kinda obvious, doesn't it?

But there's a catch. Apparently how movement happened also made a difference, and even then sometimes restrictions didn't matter. I bolded the punchline.

Not all areas would benefit equally from such restrictions, the findings showed. Places that had high traffic both within and among counties saw the most benefit from restricting travel. For example, counties near a major interstate highway, such as I-80 from New York to San Francisco or I-95 from the Canadian border to Miami, had a higher cost of anarchy — meaning travel restrictions would be helpful.

By contrast, low traffic areas did not benefit much from travel restrictions, so their cost of anarchy was lower, the model showed.

Surprisingly, some densely trafficked areas still wouldn't benefit much from travel restrictions. The policies only benefitted high-traffic regions that were near other high-traffic areas. "It was only when we established the longer-range correlation [with neighboring high-traffic areas] that we could make sense of it," Juanes said.

Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/health/2013/08/01/price-anarchy-how-contagion-spreads/#ixzz2ajK38ZKb

[Gusington]

Would be cool to see a strategy game based on quarantining and putting theories into practice.

[Nefaro]

Would be cool to see a strategy game based on quarantining and putting theories into practice.

Do we get to shoot people if they attempt to escape?

[bayonetbrant]

there's plenty of these as BOGSATs

I actually worked on a few of them for ODH back in grad school.