Doctors Compare Coronavirus to the World of Warcraft Plague

With the current outbreak of the Coronavirus, we are currently experiencing what may turn out of to be one of the biggest epidemics in recent memory. It seems, however, that in a report via PCGamesN, some researchers think that we might have seen something very similar before. Albeit, from a very unusual source.

Where you ask? Well, taking you back to 2005, the doctors have been making more than a few comparisons from the Coronavirus to the ‘Corrupted Blood Incident’. A ‘plague’ of sorts that occurred in World of Warcraft.

World of Warcraft – The Corrupted Blood Incident

So, what was the ‘Corrupted Blood Incident’? Well, in very basic terms, it was an unexpected glitch within the World of Warcraft. Following a de-buff from one of the (relatively speaking) end-game bosses, it gave your character a pretty nasty ‘damage over time’ effect. When specific players left the instance with the de-buff still on them, however, the effect (lasting around 10 minutes) didn’t go. Well, more accurately, for hunters, the ‘plague’ wasn’t removed from their pets. As such, when those infected hunters went to capital cities (as it often the case with a Hearthstone), their creatures started spreading the ‘Corrupted Blood’ effect like wildfire! As such, it didn’t take long before the major cities of Azeroth were scattered with the corpses of low-level characters.

For a more detailed description, there is a Wikipedia page you can read here.

Why Is This Gaming Incident Important?

Despite the incident occurring within the World of Warcraft, doctors found it interesting enough to produce a research paper. Why? Well, put simply, they saw it as a prime example of how an epidemic works. Basically, a remotely small group of infected subjects coming into contact with a large number of people can cause a rapid spread.

Those exact same researchers, however, are now saying that we might be seeing a ‘real-world’ example of this with the current Coronavirus epidemic. Put simply, it only needs a small number of infected, coming into contact with large groups, to quickly cause a spread. More so, that ‘stronger players’ or healthier people are more likely to be resistant to it. In addition, that the ‘plague’ could’ve been avoided (or at least limited) if people simply self-isolated their characters.

It’s a comparison I’d never considered before. The more I think about it, however, the more I do agree that there are definitely parallels here! Sadly though, we can’t cure the Coronavirus with a server reset. We can, however, try to do our best to limit it!

What do you think? Were you a victim of the Corrupted Blood plague? Do you think there are strong comparisons to be made here? – Let us know in the comments!