Standing Disease

This is introduced in Epidemics: Introduction.

Equipment required: people (lots of them)!

  • Everyone starts sitting down.
  • One person stands and is the first case.
  • They pick two others to infect.
  • Those two stand up and each pick two others.
  • The next generation stands up and each pick two more… and so on.

Things to think about:

  • How many steps did the disease take to infect whole class?
  • What difference does it make if each person infects 3 people instead of 2?  Can you suggest a rule?
  • What if your class were bigger?
  • How many steps would it take to infect the whole schoo?
  • How about the UK - the population is about 61.5 million.
  • How about the whole world - the population is about 6.7 billion.