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Jodie McVernon, Professor and Director of Doherty Epidemiology, The University of Melbourne

Did an accidental 'blood plague' in World of Warcraft help scientists model COVID better? The results are in

World of Warcraft Disease Pandemic infectious disease

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Way before COVID, in 2005 the World of Warcraft game developers accidentally introduced an extremely virulent highly contagious disease into this game which then spread to infect the whole fantasy world and caused a virtual pandemic.

As far removed as this may seem from the goings on in the real world, the spread of this virtual disease appeared to have potential relevance to understanding real world epidemics.

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