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Plague Inc was definitely the inspiration for making this game. The idea was "Plague Inc in reverse". It was early 2020 and I wanted to build out a simulation to see what would happen if COVID ended up spreading outside of China to the rest of the world, how would containment & mitigation strategies affect disease replication & national economies. As much as possible, I used real epidemiological models & formulas to build the game's "disease engine". 

Unexpectedly, the game seems to do a pretty good job predicting what ended up happening--riots and economic turmoil. Although one possibility I did not add to the game was that the vaccine would end up not ending the pandemic--because at that time it was understood that vaccines prevent diseases. Our understanding of what vaccines do now has shifted. Looks like I got that bit wrong.

Thanks! In the full version SARS and Black death are included already, and I was really excited to plug in Ebola as well. But one thing I discovered after plugging in the disease data into the game is that it's actually super easy to contain an Ebola outbreak! So I ended up removing Ebola for being too easy (despite being a truly terrifying disease).