Lao Voices

After the recent Bird Flu outbreaks in Laos and the fear of human-to-human transfer of the H5N1 virus, and watching movies such as Grindhouse and 28 week later I started wondering what would happen to a society when a fullblown lethal virus would spread.

Oddly enough, the closest proxy that delivers insight to an outbreak comes from a online game. World of Warcraft, a Massively multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORPG)
In World of Warcraft, a virtual disease called “the corrupted blood disease” spread rapidly, killing off thousands of players in an uncontrolled plague.

The behaviour of the human players in the game was - very likely - comparable to the reaction of people to a real life virus outbreak. Researcher Professor Nina Fefferman, from Tufts University School of Medicine said: “Human behaviour has a big impact on disease spread. And virtual worlds offer an excellent platform for studying human behaviour.”

Roughly, there were three responses that humans display to a lethal outbreak:
- Some acted selflessly, rushing to the aid of other characters even though that meant they risked infection themselves.
- Others fled infected cities in an attempt to save themselves
- And some who were sick made it their mission to deliberately infect others.

Let’s not make this a self fulfilling prophecy