I love this piece in the Globe by Helen Branswell ... it describes how real-world researchers are gleaning insights from virtual world behaviour during a plague that happened to avatars in World of Warcraft. Two researchers from universities in the states published a paper in Lancet Infectious Diseases:
The researchers, Eric Lofgren and Nina Fefferman, said this first major virtual world plague and others like it could help bridge the gap between real-world studies and mathematical models, which are limited in terms of their ability to predict how people will react when faced with a situation such as a disease threat.
My absolute favourite quote is from one of the researchers which describes what I think any large-scale viral outbreak will *truly* be like .. the stupid factor:
Dr. Fefferman, a mathematical ecologist at Tufts, said piecing together the way people behaved as the contagion spread taught her some unexpected lessons about human behaviour.
One was what she called the "stupid factor," which led some players to approach the carnage out of curiosity rather than flee to protect themselves.
The article does not mention that the US Center for Disease Control has a location in Second Life where they are doing some preparatory training for health care personal around outbreaks. And there is also a great program called Play2Train which is running simulations in Second Life. Below is a 16 minute video overview of the program (thanks to metaversed for the link)
Ironically, speaking of "the stupid factor", I found the reference to the above Globe article on ann marie's "Metaverse in the Making" blog. And I found her by reading her comment on one of my fav SL bloggers Whole Lotta Rosie who was discussing the really outrageous inappropriate behaviour of some folks in SL ... well, inappropriate for public consumption anyway.
I wonder if you can disaster train for that :)
