“CLUBASID” A highly visual simulation software for simulating spread of infectious diseases.

CLUBASID, previously called “Pandemic Simulator” is a software that is built to help simulate the spread of infectious disease within a population group. The development of this software started on the 15th of March 2020 and I plan on continuous development for years to come. The screenshot below was the first “showcase” of the software, which I posted a video of on youtube.

As you can see from the image above, little dots (representing individuals) are moving around and the infected individuals are infecting the uninfected individuals when they get close to each other. The panel on the left shows different variables that would affect the outcome of the simulation. I used a “personal hygiene” variable to represent healthy practices such as washing hands frequently and wearing face mask frequently, both of which reduce the probability of getting infected and spreading infections. Other variables I included are total population (which is self explanatory), world length and world width (both of which define the land area occupied by the present population), initial infection rate (which is the percentage of individuals that are infected at the start of the simulation) and average age (which represents the average age of the population).

From the image above, you can also see that individuals are divided into different health categories (looking at the panel on the bottom right). These categories include “uninfected” (people who are not infected by the virus), “infected no symptoms” (people who are infected but are asymptomatic), “infected & symptoms” (people who are infected and are symptomatic) and people who have died from the disease. When an individual gets infected, the infection starts as asymptomatic. It takes some time before the infected person becomes symptomatic. This period is known as the incubation period (from being asymptomatic and infectious to being symptomatic and infectious). Asymptomatic individuals are represented using the blue colour, symptomatic individuals are represented using the red colour and uninfected individuals are represented using the white colour.

There are now more “health categories” added to the ones we already had. New categories include.

1. Recoveries: Number of people who recovered from the disease (note that this number would always be smaller than the initial population size assuming that recovery from the illness leads to life-long immunity. This would be the case in diseases like Varicella and mumps)
2. Never been infected: Number of people that have never contacted the disease.
3. Life long immunity: number of people who have recovered from the disease and have life long immunity (this is the case in diseases like varicella and mumps). In this case, we do not have to worry about these individuals, once they have recovered, they cannot be infected by the disease and they cannot pass on infection. Individuals with lifelong immunity are shown using the green colour.
4. Temporary immunity: Number of people who have recovered from the disease and have developed anti-bodies which would last a certain period of time. While the antibodies are active, these individuals are shown as yellow. The antibodies last for a period of time (depending on the disease that we are simulating for), after which they go back to the “uninfected” category (in this case, they are now susceptible to the disease and are shown using the white colour). An example of a disease where immunity is temporary (not life-long) would be influenza.