Alternative Education

  According to Wikipedia, Plague Inc.: Evolved is…   " a real-time strategy simulation game developed by Ndemic Creations. In it, players create and evolve a pathogen in an effort to destroy the world with a deadly plague. It has several realistic variables that help simulate the spread and severity of the plague, bringing awareness to the dangers of each pathogen, and to CDC, which is the Center for Disease Control and Prevention. "

    Through this game, I personally learned a lot more about different types of pathogens. I didn’t even know they were even called pathogens before now, only considering ' illnesses ‘ as either bacteria or viruses. It also taught me just how many variables come into play when talking about the infection rate of certain diseases. With its mini notifs during the ingame that help give more information, I’ve also become aware of just how many different pandemics have occurred throughout history-- the game providing a mini message such as “ Your plague has become more infectious than the common cold ! “  whenever the infection rate reaches a certain threshold.

     It helps teach the players what the world does to prevent a pathogen from spreading, and how the state of certain countries very much affects the disease’s survival rate-- spreading faster if it’s in hotter or colder climates, or what type of livestock a certain country has. You even have to take into consideration the wealth of the country ( due to its healthcare ) or its overall population when deciding where in the world to start the disease or how you’re going to spread it, since countries with the highest healthcare are the most difficult to get the disease to spread to. Some countries, such as Greenland, are set to shut down very quickly should the pathogen become too noticeable at the start, making it nearly impossible to infect once they have closed down-- turning up the difficulty when you consider the only way to infect Greenland is through sea ports with a very cold climate, wanting to make the sea infection & cold resistance a priority.

      Though there’s some pathogens that have been added just for the fun of the game ( such as the Simian Flu which is a direct reference to Planet Ape or the Shadow Plague which turns people into vampires ), there are other pathogens that can be found in our everyday life. In-game, they’re categorised by playstyle difficulty, going from bacteria being the easiest to manipulate and evolve, to neurax worm being the most difficult. I’ve never gotten past the fungus stage, so there’s not much I can say on the playstyle of the other pathogens just yet.

The in-game descriptions are as follows:

      Because I was curious, I went to research more into each pathogen individually, looking to see how accurate the game was in terms of the validity of each pathogen.

PATHOGENS

     Pathogens are organisms that cause damaging diseases on a person. It needs a host in order to survive / thrive, using the body’s resources to replicate itself before transferring to a new host. The severity of the disease depends a lot on which one it is-- be it virus or bacteria, or unicellular or multicellular eukaryotes. They can be spread through various different means, such as skin contact, bodily fluid, through the air or water, touching infected surfaces, and more. Its method of transmission depends largely on which pathogen in particular has infected the host.

    A vast majority of bacteria are harmless, making them non-pathogenic. Rather than having a negative effect on the body, they can be seen as beneficial. That said, there are some bacteria ( which are pathogens ) that can be pretty damaging or can severely affect the health of an individual. They are microscopic, single-celled organisms that can reproduce rapidly once it has been introduced to the body. They are very diverse, meaning they can survive in all kinds of environments-- such as soil, acidic hot springs, radioactive wastes, seawater, snow countries, in rain, and more.

      CURES: While normal antibiotics are capable of treating bacterial infections, some can grow to have resistance to certain drugs. Natural antibiotics can also help, such as garlic, honey, ginger, and more. Another way to treat bacteria is through bacteriophage therapy, in which doctors introduce a phage virus that infects the bacteria, though it’s not particularly recommended.

       They are smaller than bacteria, and cannot grow or reproduce outside of a host body or cell. The most famous outbreaks were caused by viruses, such as ebola, the black death, polio, influenza, dengue, and the most recent one, COVID-19-- just to name a couple of the most renowned ones. While they are hard to get control of due to their high infection rate, they have also been used as instrumental research tools that helped further our understanding of basic cellular processes.

      According to LiveScience, viruses tend to teeter on the boundaries of life-- containing the key elements that make up all living organisms, whilst simultaneously lacking the capacity to read or act upon the information contained in their nucleus. Which is why they, basically, hijack the host’s cell machinery to do the replication for them. Viruses can usually be transmitted through respiratory passages, open wounds, insects, and more. It has a high mutation rate due to it’s random “ copying errors “, but for a large majority of the time, the mutations are minor. So much so it doesn’t affect the validity of vaccines. It is possible, though. Using influenza as an example, sometimes antigens drift too far from the virus, making the antigenic drift one of the main reasons why flu vaccines have to be constantly updated-- it makes the host vulnerable to the new mutated viruses.

          CURES: they can be prevented through good hygiene-- keeping places disinfected, since soaps, detergents and alcohol destroy the lipid layer of the virus’s, which makes it so that they can no longer infect cells. Antibiotics do not work for viral infections, but there are some antiviral medicines that help treat them. Taking vaccines also helps a lot in preventing getting many of said viral diseases. Treatment itself, apart from the antiviral medicines, has been challenging-- hence the persistence of practicing prevention rather than treatment. This is due to their high mutation rate, making it harder to make cures for certain strands.

      They are ( usually ) multicellular eukaryotic organisms that are unable to create their own food, making them heterotrophs. Though the kingdom of fungi is made up of four types-- saprotrophic, pathogenic, parasitic, and symbionts--, there are thousands of different species of fungi. The saprotrophic fungi is the largest group. It is the one we are aware of the most & is the one that lives in soil microbial communities, making them essential in carbon recycling. Pathogenic and parasitic fungi, however, are the second largest group, which mainly focus on attacking all groups of organisms.

       They have complex life cycles with multiple forms, making it vastly more difficult to find drugs that will kill it without killing the host. Though a single drug could kill one form of the fungi, it’s pretty ineffective at killing the rest, allowing it to survive and continue multiplying or changing forms. Some of the most common types of fungi infections are athlete’s foot, malaria, and more. They spread through microscopic spores, usually beginning in the lungs or the skin due to their air transference, and are very slow to progress or mutate. The spore is often present in the soil or in the air, where inhaling it or touching it can help spread the infection. They can either grow as yeasts or as molds, sometimes even switching or passing through both throughout their life cycle, and can usually be seen with the naked eye.

        CURE: There are antifungal and antiparasitic drugs, but they’re usually less effective and are relatively toxic for the person. That said, for most fungal infections, antifungal drugs can be applied on the infected site to try to get rid of it-- and if not, then either orally or injected.

       They’re organisms that largely behave like small animals that live on a host and feed from them. It usually feasts at the expense of the host, but there are some cases in which it doesn’t. They can usually be spread through soil, water, food, blood, sexual contact and insect bites.         There are three major types of parasites: 

                 Protozoa; 

                          Single-celled microscopic organisms that can live & multiply within the body, usually causing serious infections. Transmissions of protozoa that live in the intestine usually happen through fecal-oral routes-- like food, water, or person-to-person contact. The ones that live in the blood or human tissues usually only spread through mosquitoes or sand flies, or other such methods. 

               Helminths; 

                           Larger, multi-celled organisms that can live in or out of the body-- commonly known as worms. They’re usually visible to the naked eye when in their adult stage, but when in that final stage, they cannot multiple. They can be either free-living or parasitic, originating from three main groups; flatworms, thorny-headed worms or roundworms.

                  Ectoparasites; 

                           Multi-celled organisms that live or feed off of skin. The term itself refers to most blood sucking arthropods, but it doesn’t include the mosquito most of the time. It’s usually used to refer to ticks, fleas, lice and mites-- insects that attach or burrow into the skin and have to be actively extracted. They’re capable of causing their own diseases, as well as spreading other diseases, which is why they have such a tremendous morbidity / mortality rate.

              CURE: The treatment depends on the diagnosis ! Usually there’s prescribed antiparasitic or antibacterial medications that can help get rid of the parasites, but some medications might not be for everyone ( such as pregnant women or people with other health problems ). Given how the parasites are essentially living beings, the best way to cure it is to remove the parasite-- and until it is removed, one can be prescribed treatments or things one can do that can help relieve the symptoms. Some parasites have built a resistance, however, so sometimes medicine is not the most effective cure.

       They are abnormal, able to fold their cellular proteins abnormally and are most abundantly found in the brain. They come from a rare family of neurodegenerative disorders, and it is capable of affecting both humans and animals. Despite their rather long incubation periods, they are associated with major neuronal loss and one's inability to induce an inflammatory response. Most importantly, they’re pretty rare.

        “ Prion “ is only the term itself, a culmination of various diseases that end up falling under the category of transmissible spongiform encephalopathies (TSEs). These pathogenic agents are still not completely understood, scientists really only know its basic symptoms / characteristic signs, and that it leads to brain damage. It’s hard to know much about them, given how they usually progress rapidly and are always fatal. Two of the most common diseases that come from prions are Mad Cow Disease ( which can trespass to humans as well ), and Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease.

        So far, there are no known cures, doctors only know how to provide supportive care in hopes to ease the symptoms or slow the progress. Some symptoms include hallucinations, difficulty walking, rapidly developing dementia, difficulty speaking, confusion, and fatigue. This is all due to the fact that prion's main attribute is it’s distinct attack towards the brain. People who have this disease, are forced to live with it for life, and need help taking care of themselves.

       They’re a multi-part, single-stranded DNA plant virus that was first discovered in the late 1980’s. It mostly affects plants such as bananas, faba beans, legume crops, and even some fungi, insects and marine invertebrates-- but it is most commonly found in legume plants, given they’re their natural hosts. Some of its major symptoms are dwarfing, leaf rolling, necrosis, and yellowing of leaves. It is also mostly transmitted through aphids, and cannot replicate inside a vector.

       That said, the Nano-Virus the game is implying to seems to be non-existent. There is no such man made, mechanical virus going around in our world. While it can technically infect humans, I have found no proof of it so far-- every google result leading to Norovirus, instead of Nanovirus. That said, there doesn’t seem to be that much cure for nano-virus either, given how I kept getting responses related to norovirus instead of nano-virus whenever I searched for a cure.

       They are pathogens such as viruses, bacteria, fungi and other toxins that are deliberately produced and spread for the sake of causing harm. Usually, they cause diseases and deaths on humans, animals or plants in a very short amount of time-- hence them being called biological weapons. Sometimes, when controlled by certain groups, they can be used as bioterrorism attacks. They are normal pathogens that have been altered and bio-engineered to be as elusive and dangerous as possible, making them a subset of larger class weapons that can be considered as weapons of mass destruction ( chemical, nuclear & radiological weapons ).

       They have already been largely used throughout the course of history, several tens of thousands of deaths caused by the deliberate release of pathogens-- even during the Second World War, the Japanese used such bio-weapons to attack China through the poisoning of water wells, for even simple poisons are considered a type of bio weapon. The danger of bio weapons grows as our knowledge of biological disease-causing agents grows. 

        CURE: patients of bio-engineered diseases are usually given antibiotic tablets, or such antibiotics are administered through an IV even before it’s been identified. Those who are detected to have such a pathogen early on, are able to be treated early on as well. Vaccination against the most commonly known pathogens such as polio, anthrax, plague, small pox & more can help increase the immune protection in people, making it less likely for them to be affected by such pathogens.

       It’s not real. The Neurax worm is a disease specifically crafted for the sake of the game. That said, according to the game devs themselves, it’s confirmed that it was inspired by a real-life parasite ! 

       The parasite’s name is Toxoplasma gondii, which is generally shortened to T. gondii. About one third of the world’s population has been, or is still, infected by this parasite, which is transferred through contact with cat feces, uncooked contaminated meat & vegetables, blood transfusion or organ transplantation, consuming contaminated water and more. That said, because it’s most common means of transmission is through cat feces, it has donned the nickname of “ Kitty Litter Parasite “, and is one of the main reasons pregnant women are highly discouraged ( even banned ) from handling or getting near cat litter during pregnancy. 

       Most hosts are asymptomatic to it, and it usually resides in the brain or muscle cells. It’s been proven to be linked to mental illnesses such as schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, and seems to increase the risk of traffic accidents. But most importantly, it’s most commonly linked to suicides. There’s no guarantee people will kill themselves when infected with the T. gondii, or that it’s the main cause of such suicidal thoughts, but it’s been determined there could be an association between the two. The risk is seen to increase with higher levels of T. gondii, and the suicides linked to this infection are often the most brutal / violent ones. It’s even believed that the main reason the parasite gets into the cats system to begin with, is because it increases the suicidal behavior in rats, enough so that they don’t feel fear or precaution when entering a cat's territory-- allowing it to infect a cat when the rat gets eaten by it.

       CURE: Most people recover without treatment. Others who have more serious symptoms can be treated with drugs like pyrimethamine or sulfadiazine. Pregnant women, however, go through a treatment where the parasite is not completely eliminated. This is because there’s times where the parasite remains within the tissue cells while inactive, making it difficult for the medication to completely kill it without harming the host. AIDS patience might have to take medication for the rest of their lives, or for as long as they continue to be immunosuppressed. 

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       And that’s it in terms of research on pathogens ! I found it to be quite interesting to research, honestly. It was cool to see how some of them could actually be found in real life, and could have the same level of difficulty when it comes to spreading said disease ( hence the rising in difficulty level ), and how some of them didn’t even exist or were inspired by other diseases. I was very much surprised by the prion one-- I didn’t expect there to be a pathogen that was completely & utterly untreatable, yet be so devastating. It really is scary what nature can cook up.

       Next I wanted to briefly bring up the types of symptoms the game has brought up. I’ve noticed that while playing, the type of symptoms you can evolve in a pathogen doesn’t change between which pathogen you pick unless it’s a DLC. I considered making a chart like I did with the pathogens, but then decided it wasn’t the best use of my time. Especially considering that would basically be copy+pasting information the game provides, for I wasn’t about to research more information on each of the 32 symptoms presented in the game.

       I do, however, want to bring up something concerning other aspects of the game. Such as country wealth, weather conditions, political conditions, and other such things that the game takes into account when deciding how the world is going to react to a world-killing pathogen. I specifically wanted to point out how in-detail the game actually is, allowing players to be able to pick a certain country and looking at all the stats and graphs that one might need to beat this hyper realistic world that is based on real world data. 

         You’re able to monitor infection and death levels, keep track of reactions of different governments and their cure efforts. It forces you to improve the virus to adapt to the drugs/vaccines created against it ( you can even see how much each country contributes in terms of funding for cure research ! ! ! you can try to use that data to find ways to kill that country faster, too ), forcing you to spend time on that rather than on upgrading new symptoms. Various doctors, scientists-- even CDC and WHO themselves have tried to play the game ( WHO playing the spin-off game the creators made specifically in response to the COVID-19 outbreak Plague Inc: The Cure where you play as scientists seeking to control a pathogen ), and they enjoy the accuracy and the information the game provides.