One of the advantages of being friends with the game designer is that we get early copies of stuff (I’ve heard some reports of this being out in the wild? But I haven’t seen it showing up anywhere yet - very soon I’m sure). We played early playtest versions of this and the published version doesn’t look much different - just an elegantly scaled down Pandemic, it should be quite familiar to fans. I have a few friends who are gaming-adjacent or not-really-gamers who I think would get a kick out of this, but ironically face-to-face social gaming is still a distant dream here. Although maybe this would be a good outdoor game? The Cure might be better though. But indoor gaming is a fairly high risk activity and COVID-19 is settling in to be a long nightmare here in the US. Our response has been plagued by reckless incompetence combined with huge structural problems with health care and societal inequality. It’s so sad that this should come out featuring our CDC-based heroes just as the rest of the developed world is coming to look at our CDC’s bungling ineffectiveness with horror. As I meet online with gamer friends we’ve been wondering when we’ll be able to game in person again. I honestly think 2021 if we’re lucky. With our numbers now looking so much worse than anywhere in Europe or East Asia, the winter of 2020-21 is going to be another round of agony in the US I think. #gaminginthetimeofcovid19 #pandemicboardgame #pandemichotzone https://www.instagram.com/p/CBrPbU8hc_K/?igshid=1uglz5r7ifbnb
