Very interesting!
I must say, there are a few things I don't really understand or agree with however.
I tried to plant a lot of trees, both because it seemed like a primary source of income and because I believe in nature restoration and conservation as important for our future. I only ever cut trees once a tile has 4, in a way to mimic some kind of sustainable forestry practice.
I don't really like how growing of trees works as a threat to humans in this game. I can't say if it's accurate or not, but my personal belief is that trees and forests are vital to our societies so it felt weird how I was punished with viruses for letting them grow. Is the lesson that I shouldn't cut any trees at all?
Another thing that it took a while for me to realize was that viruses take up one "slot" of a tile just as trees, so no trees grow if a virus blocks its path. I finally realized that the only way to get rid of the viruses covering almost my entire map, and get more trees, was to add a single chicken and then cull it - which also felt kind of strange.
I feel like the game didn't really encourage me to find a balance between different playstyles (and maybe that's the point?). Because of the viruses everywhere I didn't really feel like farming chickens that would just get infected. Approval stayed around 30% anyway and the only thing affected was the income, which I got from forestry anyway. Humans only die from disease but not lack of food, so it felt better to just have a starving population than to try to feed them and kill some of them in the process.
Also, there was no explanation to how the blue tiles work? (OH, just realized they are WATER, lol. No wonder I couldn't build anything there. I thought maybe it was another kind of dirt or radiation or something.)
Overall I think it's a very interesting project and its cool that it connects to real research, but I wasn't sure about what the game was telling me as a player about the world and how it works.