Asymptomatic cold/flu

[fairyarmadillo]

Is your feature request related to a problem? Please describe.

When you contract a virus, you are currently always symptomatic. Sources say that up to 1/3 of influenza cases are asymptomatic, and the number may be as high as 50% for the common cold.

Some ferals are already asymptomatic, and can spread disease without coughing. Extending this to the player would allow them to unwittingly spread disease to their allies and would also cover up some weirdness such as sickness chance rapidly approaching 100% as you wander around a feral-infested location such as an aircraft carrier.

Solution you would like.

Simply add invisible asymptomatic cold and flu effects, then add a chance for the contagion EOC to apply that version instead. This chance could be a simple percentage, or it could be modified by factors such as disease resistance or age.

Asymptomatic diseases would provide the same immunity their normal versions do, and could spread via proximity at a lower rate than symptomatic ones. This same method could potentially be applied to more insidious diseases in the future, allowing an incautious player to unwittingly get NPCs killed.

Describe alternatives you have considered.

N/A

Additional context

No response

[RedMisao]

I have several opinions about this, so I'm going to try and elaborate on each of them.

1. The good news is that this isn't limited to flu, several other diseases also have a relatively high ratio of asymptomatic infection, or the symptomatic cases are a very small (and extremely vocal) minority. Assuming this is applied to flu, it can/should be expanded to any other disease, or future diseases
2. There is (seems to be) no correlation between the pathogen, virulence and % of asymptomatic infection though, so it's a case by case thing IRL. Which starts to bring tedium. given that if expanded upon, each disease has to be handled independently from each other
3. Which follows up by: is this necessary? Even if the simplest Susceptible - Infected - Recovered model is applied for flu (% of susceptibility leads to infection which leads to recovery and immunity), is it worth doing it? Flu is relatively minor to just dying, mutating, breaking a limb ,etc. For me it seems a lot of work for a small and annoying demerit (†), virtually no benefit other than reducing the incidence of flu around the player (which btw they cannot even realize - this is monitored at a population level IRL). (†) Unless you die from it ofc
4. The simplest model (SIR) is not the best model. There is people that go back from R to the S pool, there is people that go from I to death (they get removed from the population), vaccines are a thing (saw your other issue), pathogens mutate so the R pool continuously trickles down to S again, and specifically for flu the model it's best represented as SI because it keeps infecting (virtually) everyone. However...
5. Is this going to be an actual thing in the post-Cataclysm world? This question applies to both the population required to spread the disease, and diseases in a post-blob scenario: a. I imagine the number of humans, or even things that can get infected with flu, got greatly reduced. So much that in a 1:1 representation of the current world it would mean most strains, variants, types, clades, maybe even whole families of pathogens would go extinct, due sheer lack of transmission. Think that just during/after the 2020 pandemic, one of the B clades of influenza went extinct. I would expect for most diseases to disappear after the second, third season or so, flu included b. I cannot speak for what the blob does to the survivors' (and any other susceptible/reservoir species') immune system. Is there blob stuff reshaping the genetic code of the pathogens too?

[fairyarmadillo]

Which follows up by: is this necessary? Even if the simplest Susceptible - Infected - Recovered model is applied for flu (% of susceptibility leads to infection which leads to recovery and immunity), is it worth doing it? Flu is relatively minor to just dying,

The flu is not a minor demerit, it applies a large malus to your stats and in many cases totally slams the brakes on gameplay for up to 14 days. It matters quite a lot more if you're strapped for supplies, where it can become a death sentence. Colds are less severe but still a pretty big hassle to deal with. That does not mean that people shouldn't have to deal with them or that they can't be interesting, but they're not a minor thing.

I imagine the number of humans, or even things that can get infected with flu, got greatly reduced. So much that in a 1:1 representation of the current world it would mean most strains, variants, types, clades, maybe even whole families of pathogens would go extinct,

I agree, but that's not currently the case. There are colds and flus everywhere that NPCs and ferals exist, and they never go away. Tackling that would be a separate issue.

Is there blob stuff reshaping the genetic code of the pathogens too?

Currently the cold and flu are just bog standard. Mutated diseases would be really cool. That seems kinda like a tangent, but see my point about deadlier diseases sneaking under the radar.

A gameplay reason to do it is that currently there's an issue where you will eventually get sick no matter what if you're in a location with a lot of ferals, just because the game forces you to roll the dice so many times. This does not happen in, say, a real-life airport, even though that has many more people who have been exposed to many more types of pathogens. Asymptomatic infections would provide a failsafe so that the player would not feel like they always got sick when they dealt with this kind of content.

A more design document-friendly version is that it would be a better simulation. Real-life diseases are frequently asymptomatic, as shown in the sources.

Which starts to bring tedium. given that if expanded upon, each disease has to be handled independently from each other

I don't think adding one extra invisible copy-pasted effect with no maluses and a single percentile roll into the disease EOC format on the rare occasion someone decides to design a new disease is going to create a significant workload for anyone.

which btw they cannot even realize

Diseases IRL are tracked on a population level because in real life, we don't always have empirical data about who is actually sick and how they got that way. The game does always have and use that information, and the player can use blood analysis tools such as the blood analyzer CBM to check out their health situation in a way that is not possible in real life.