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Tuberculosis outbreak

Started by irrelevant, June 18, 2014, 06:13:41 PM

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irrelevant

Just had a massive tuberculosis outbreak, spread like wildfire, lasted over a year, and 27 citizens died, maybe a total of 250 were infected (not all at once).

I watched as new nodes of infected citizens erupted and spread out through the town, heading off to spread the infection further.

I have 5 hospitals, so that was not really the issue; the issue seemed to be folks moving around, doing their jobs.

In desperation, I shut down all construction and resource movement. I fired half of the traders and vendors. The harvest was ending, so farmers were sticking close to home.

Within a month the number of active cases fell from 64 to 12. Still bouncing around between 5 and 15, but I am hopeful that with fewer people walking around, it will soon peter out.

edit: I finally did build one more hospital in an outlying quarter where there was none nearby. That seemed to be the final blow to the outbreak, the number of cases fell from 10 to 0 in a month.

nmid

yea, diseases are really contagious in Banished.

salamander

I've said it before, and I'll say it again -- I'm impressed with the way that epidemics spread in the game.  They seem to be worse the more crowded the town is (ie, the higher the population).  This is exactly what you would expect in the 'real' world.

The game information implies that different diseases may spread differently, or have different mortality rates, but I haven't had enough epidemics happen to really have an opinion about that one way or another.  If these turned out to be true, I'm that much more impressed.

@irrelevant -- your approach of shutting down production is interesting in that it seems to have made a difference in the epidemic spread.  If you have any further outbreaks, please post your results.  Your approach could be a good way to minimize the duration of an epidemic.

RedKetchup

lol and you cant cheat the game ^^

since 2-3 days , bah since of my 22 years long disease... i try to put the hospitals way further (not side of a trading post like the other day ^^) and...

the game is doing everything to try to spread the diseases...


in this screenshot i want to show my hospital and my citizens. they never go there but since there are 2-3 infected ..... i think ALL my citizens gone all afk at the hospital just on purpose. even , pretty sure, 2x times EACH citizens ^^



but i still managed to get only 3 infected total.
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solarscreen

I learned the hard way to put the hospitals away from the main roads and population centers.  Flomaton was up over 900 and when my epidemic was finally over I was in the 600s.  A painful lesson!

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irrelevant

#5
Two more outbreaks. Didn't get screenshots from either one, sorry  ;)

Here's what you need to do to nip an outbreak in the bud. Pause the game instantly, and find patient zero. You can click an icon on his personal panel that will show you where he works. If it's a student, you are out of luck; otherwise, shut the facility down and fire all the workers. Then pause construction on all your projects. If you are demolishing anything (especially storage piles and barns) or clearing resources, stop that as well. If you're building any roads, cancel them. Next, figure out where he is going and shut down all TPs and markets in his path and then fire all the traders and vendors. What you want is to stop folks in the area he is in from moving to other areas. You want to get people in his area off the roads until he gets to a hospital.

You may also want to make a fresh save before you do all that  ;)

By taking these actions, I held an outbreak of scarlet fever in the center of my pop 1600 town to 8 cases. An outbreak of dysentery did not spread beyond patient zero, and he was a vendor. By shutting down his market and firing all its workers, I stopped him from returning to the market and potentially infecting everyone there.

It's a lot of work, and very disruptive, but if it works it is far less disruptive than a disease that "goes viral;" only you can decide for yourself if it is worth it.

Paeng

#6
Quote from: irrelevant on June 18, 2014, 06:13:41 PMI have 5 hospitals, so that was not really the issue

Well, it really depends where those hospitals are built... by now I'm pretty 'paranoid' about disease (specially since I do take in Nomads frequently).

I build lots of Hospitals (as well as Herbalists) - about 1 per 100 residents, spread out to strategically cover most areas... as has been mentioned, it's good to build them away from public areas and main roads, best with some difficult terrain around them too - anything to slow the walkers down even more! They can be quite remote, as the sick peeps will still search them out. I also try to build enough alternative idling spots away from the hospitals, to prevent healthy peeps from going to a hospital just to idle...

What I noticed - my sick peeps now always stay in hospital until cured... before I often had the problem that they would leave while still sick - and thereby spreading it again. Not sure which factor 'solved' that, but it seems to work...

Can't keep 'em off 100% - specially kids seem to be really curious about that strange fortified building up in the distant hills  :-\

But I do manage to keep those outbreaks small and localized without any demolishing or firing or stopping work generally - my latest few (in a town of ~900) never got beyond 3 or 4 sick... and hopefully that is not just lucky RNG  ;D
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irrelevant

I agree it's best to have the hospitals off the beaten path, but having them be too remote can itself be an issue, as the sick folks may infect others while they are walking there. I suppose the only answer to that is to have lots of hospitals.

I've never noticed any sick person who had entered a hospital ever leave it while still sick. I have seen instances where a sick person going into a hospital has infected healthy folks idling near the hospital, who then proceeded to leave the hospital area to go do some task (work, get food, etc).

Paeng

Quote from: irrelevant on June 20, 2014, 06:47:27 AMI've never noticed any sick person who had entered a hospital ever leave it while still sick.

Hmmm... I have definitely seen sick persons leave a hospital. My observations are maybe not sharp enough - if may be possible that a person entered a hospital healthy (typical idler) and left it sick (to continue some previously defined task)... Good point...  :)
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rkelly17

I suppose I ought to weigh in on this topic since I'm known as the epidemic guy  :'(

In the town I'm working on for the 500 farmer challenge (just broke 300, so more work to do) I have about 1200 people at the moment. Had a really bad diphtheria outbreak, then a not so bad mumps out break. In between I rearranged my hospitals to spread them out and get them more out of the way. All are now off the main road and several surrounded by storage yards. The mumps ended up infecting 5 or 6 people (diphtheria was more like 50 or 60 or more). When person 0 was walking to the hospital he infected 1 other person. Unfortunately that person was a laborer who insisted on going about her work and infected the other 4 or 5. When she finally decided to visit the doctor she was far across the map from her home hospital (each citizen seems to be permanently assigned to the hospital nearest his or her house) and died on the way. The others all got to the hospital, recovered and went on their way. I did not see anyone infected by idling near a hospital, though in the earlier diphtheria outbreak this was a major cause of contagion.

As I mentioned in a post in another thread, before the diphtheria outbreak I had stopped thinking about hospitals and after a major expansion to the North my formerly out-of-the-way hospital was now on a major route between the northern concentration and the central concentration. That made matters worse since many people both passed by and idled. Along with building more hospitals around the map I also redirected traffic into a long tunnel that bypassed the now-problematic hospital by strategic placement of orchards and fields--though you have to be careful with this because citizens will cut through farm land that doesn't have a crop in it or between rows of trees in an orchard. I think that the point is to make it more convenient to use the route you want them to follow. I also paved the roads along the desired route to make them easier and faster.

I've also speculated elsewhere that idling behavior may be set in the program so as to increase contagion. Why else would anyone idle around a hospital? In the game you can limit it, but you cannot eliminate it, no matter how many beautiful idling magnets you build or how out of the way and ugly your hospitals are. I've seen citizens climb over some nasty terrain just so they can idle behind a hospital surrounded on three sides by storage yards and backed up against a mountain.

irrelevant

#10
Early on in my current game I foolishly built a hospital directly across the road from a cemetary. Bad idea! Going to have to tear that sucker down and build another one someplace else. Ditto for my very first hospital, which now is in the center of town  >:(

Locating hospitals is a challenge. They belong on the fringes of things, but my fringes keep moving.

rkelly17

Quote from: irrelevant on June 24, 2014, 08:16:52 AM
Early on in my current game I foolishly built a hospital directly across the road from a cemetary. Bad idea! Going to have to tear that sucker down and build another one someplace else. Ditto for my very first hospital, which now is in the center of town  >:(

Locating hospitals is a challenge. They belong on the fringes of things, but my fringes keep moving.

Isn't that the truth! When I first started playing Banished I was building hospitals on the main town square next door to the school. Was that ever a bad idea! Many people died of many diseases because of that decision. Then I started moving them out, but as you say, "out" is an evolving concept. Every so often you get lucky and find a spot that will stay fairly isolated for the whole game, but there aren't a lot of those. And since people will go their assigned hospital no matter where they get sick, even they are not fool proof. And I am constantly amazed at how far and over what terrain citizens will go to idle at the hospital.

irrelevant

Once again, contained an outbreak to patient zero.

She was a trader who came down with mumps while in that tunnel there, moving away from her trading post to pick up who knows what from who knows where. She could walk halfway around the map. So I shut down her TP and fired all the workers. She became a laborer, instantly turned around and went straight to this hospital.

slink

I had a mumps outbreak which I "cured" by reloading from shortly before the outbreak.  The first time I reloaded, I got the outbreak again.  On the second reloading I did not.  I only have one hospital for half of a large valley map, and about 800 people.  I play on x2.  I feel that disease comes in part from the RNG, and is more likely at higher speeds, but I seldom play on higher speeds so it could just be that my reaction time is slow.


RedKetchup

#14
so like the merchants ... we can reload and not get the disease anymore ?
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