A-bit of COVID

This project was created by first year University of Waterloo students, during the months of June-August. Our goal with this project was to educate people on different aspects of COVID. This was done by using 3 different simulations, which explored: how COVID spreads in a community and the affect of social distancing, the effect of masks on virual particles, how long COVID virual particles can survive on different materials in different conditions.

We aimed to make our simulations interactive, informative, and factually correct (to the extent that current research allows us). Below is a more in-depth description of each simulation, although we encourage you to visit the project website, and try them out for yourself!

The first simulation explores how COVID spreads in a mini-community that consists of a grocery store, a school, an office, and a home. The user has the option of choosing which character they would like to play as. They have the option of choosing between a young, middle aged, or old male or female character, and can choose to play with or without a mask. They may also decide the current building capacity, which reflects social distancing measures.

Within the game, there are many NPC's (nonplayer characters). These characters move between different parts of the map, form groups, talk to each-other, and move around within the game. The age, gender, and weather or not the NPC is wearing a mask all affect their likelyhood of being infected if exposed to the virus. When NPC's are infected, they go throught a phase of showing no symptoms, but still spreading the particles (shown when blinking red), and become fully infected when solid red.

Once the user wishes to leave the simulation, they press the menu bar at the top right, and they can see the amount of people infected in the community, and the amount of time the simulation ran. Playing multiple rounds with different paramaters for the social distancing, can help users understand the importance of such measures, and why they are implemented, as well as why they should be followed.

The second simulation explores the effect of masks on COVID particles. The user may choose between different combinations of masks, and actions (such as sneezing, coughing or talking). The user may then see how virus particles interact with the mask, and how effective the mask is in different scenarios. The full mathematics and physics used for the implementation can be found in the "Research" section on our website, and we highly reccomend you to read it(althought, it is not a light read, it is interesting). This simulation aims to help people understand the importance of wearing masks, but also the limitations that come with them, (ecspecially the cheaper ones). Remember, just because you wear a mask you are not 100% safe, you must still abide social distancing measures!

The third and final simulation explores how long COVID particles survive on different materials in different conditions. The user may choose from a variety of different materials such as phone screens, paper money, and clothes. They may also choose the temperature and humidity of the enviornment. Again, the full mathematics of our implementation can be found in the "Research" section of our website. The user can view how long virual particles last on different materials, given different circumstances. With this simulation, we hope to show users that air-borne particles are not the only mode of infection, and people must be vigilant about particles on surfaces as well.

We hope you enjoy our project, if you have any questions or comments, please feel free to email [email protected], and I will happily share them with our team!