"Covid 19" is a mesmerizing if horrifying simulation that powerfully illustrates the importance of social distancing as a strategy to defeat the spread of Coronavirus. Created by artificial life/avatar technology pioneer Jeffrey Ventrella, a programmer who did some seminal work for Second Life and other virtual worlds, it animates what charts cannot quite convey: Not just that social distancing "flattens the curve", but that failure to practice social distancing gets people yanked into the hospital -- or worse, sent unceremoniously to the morgue.

"In early March, I heard about [the simulation in] this article in the Washington Post," Jeffrey tells me, explaining the origin of the program. "Friends kept telling me it looked like something I would do, so I decided to try my own variation -- with the addition of a hospital symbol that shows how social distancing eases the load on hospitals. Since I do particle systems in my sleep, it was a perfect experiment for me."

He created "Covid 19" in JavaScript and Html/Canvas, using similar physics techniques to Clusters, another Ventrella sim. Here's its basic operation: