Where Does Plain Language End and Editorial Style Begin? And Why Your Organization Needs Two Separate Guides

A recent fabulous Plain Canada Clair webinar about style guides sparked conversation about the confusion many organizations face:
How much should a plain language guide cover, and when should editorial guidance take over?

The short answer is that a plain language guide should help people make writing understandable, while a style guide should help people make writing consistent.
Trying to combine the two usually dilutes both.

What a Plain Language Guide Is—and Is Not

A plain language guide exists to help writers and reviewers answer one core question: Will the intended audience understand this? It should cover the decision-making aspects that affect clarity and usability.

What belongs in a Plain Language Guide

• How to identify your audience and their information needs,
• How to structure information logically and support cognitive processing (see this comma story),
• When and how to define terms,
• Where and how to support content with visuals, tables, and alternative formats,
• What techniques to use for evaluating clarity and actionability (testing, peer review, heuristics),
• What accessibility considerations matter for the organization, including multilingual writing and localization for cross-cultural audiences.

These are decisions that affect meaning, comprehension, and user success.

What does not belong in a Plain Language Guide

• Whether you capitalize job titles,
• Whether you use % or “percent,”
• Whether you use serial commas,
• Whether you spell out numbers one through nine,
• How you write date formats (ok, if you localize you may need to remind people in your plain language guide that formats vary—and refer them to the appropriate style rule!).

These issues matter—but they don’t affect comprehension in the same way. They affect uniformity and brand identity. And that’s the job of an editorial style guide.

The Purpose of an Editorial Style Guide

An editorial style guide is your organization’s “house rules.” Its job is to ensure consistency to:

• Reduce cognitive friction,
• Build trust,
• Support efficiency for writers and editors,
• Protect brand identity,
• Reduce ambiguity in legal and policy documents through predictable use of grammar (see this comma story).

What belongs in an Editorial Style Guide

• Capitalization and punctuation rules
• Spelling preferences
• Number formatting
• Abbreviations and acronyms
• Tone and voice
• Formatting conventions
• Citations and references
• Templates, boilerplate, and standard language (which should be done in plain language!)

These decisions don’t require audience testing or cognitive heuristics—they require specifications.

What about glossaries? OK, yes, terminology can be tricky: preferred terms and banned terms go in the style guide. Definitions of brand terms go in the style guide. Guidelines for defining terms go in the plain language guide.

Why Combining Them Causes Problems

When organizations blend the two, they typically end up with a document that:

• is too long for writers to use,
• buries high-impact clarity guidance under technical guidance,
• forces plain language reviewers to argue about punctuation instead of reader needs,
• makes training more confusing, not less.

Worse, it sends the message that “plain language = grammar rules,” which is… exactly the opposite of plain language’s purpose. For a style guide, grammar is the goal. For plain language, grammar is the means.

Plain language is about helping people understand information so they can act on it. Editorial style is about helping organizations communicate consistently so readers can move past decoding to interpreting messages. Those goals are not the same.

The Sweet Spot: Two Guides That Work Together

A modern communication ecosystem works best when you have:

1) A Plain Language Guide

A practical document that teaches writers how to think clearly and express thoughts . It should be short, actionable, and focused on communication goals and user-centered decision-making.

2) An Editorial Style Guide

A reference document for editorial decisions—for look-up rather than instruction.

3) Cross-references between them

For example:

“For rules on capitalization, see the Editorial Style Guide.”
“If a technical term must be used, follow the Plain Language Guide’s approach for defining terms.”

This keeps each guide focused and functional, while making the relationship between them clear.

What Should Go Where? A Quick Heuristic

Ask this: Is this about whether readers will understand the content?

If yes → Plain Language Guide

Or: Is this about whether writers will produce predictable-looking content?

If yes → Editorial Style Guide

It’s that simple—and that powerful.

Here’s a comparison with coding. (If you never tried, here’s a very short Hello World hands-on–technically markup and not programming, but it illustrates function versus convention: change red to GREEN as background color and run it.)

• Plain language = the logic and architecture of your communication, like a programming language.

• Style guide = the conventions and formatting used to express it, like case choices for code.

Honor the Purpose of Each Tool

Plain language and editorial style are partners, not competitors. One helps you make sense. The other helps you look like you belong to the same organization. When each guide does its own job, writers spend less time debating commas and more time ensuring readers understand the information they need to navigate systems, make decisions, and participate fully.

Plain language opens doors. Editorial style keeps the hallway tidy. You need both.

—-

P.S.: A Quick Comma+ Story

Remember the “5-Million Dollar Comma” case? It was a dispute in the State of Maine involving overtime pay exemptions and the tiny punctuation mark—or, more accurately, the lack thereof in: “marketing, storing, packing for shipment or distribution.” The missing comma AND the missing parallel structure between “distribution” as a noun and the gerunds on the list (-ing forms) convinced the court that the language was sufficiently ambiguous to grant drivers (who did the distribution) 5 years of overtime pay. The truck drivers argued they “distributed” goods but did no “packaging for shipment or distribution” (interpreted as a single activity), so the exemption should not apply to them!

Both editorial style and plain language choices matter.
Back to Plain Language Guide Section. Back to Style Guide Section.

Different frameworks inevitably reflect the emphasis placed on different aspects of communication. ISO 24495-1:2023 organizes its guidance around four governing principles—relevant, findable, understandable, and usable—with “understandable” encompassing a wide range of linguistic and structural considerations, from wording to tone to cohesion. This structure serves the purpose of the standard, which is to provide a broad, outcome-based framework for authors across contexts. My plain language framework differs from  ISO 24495-1:2023 because it expands the four principles into five, grouped in my trademarked RAISE™ framework, which includes Relevance, Access, Intelligibility, Suitability, and Efficacy.

Unpacking “Understandable” in a Plain Language Framework

In my own practice, I have found it helpful to unpack “understandable” into the two distinct dimensions of Intelligibility and Suitability. I separate these not to diverge from the standard but to make explicit two linguistic aspects that require different kinds of decisions from authors—and which, while not discrete or sequential, can build on each other. So, RAISE™ offers a practical way to operationalize two linguistic dimensions at the heart of clear communication: how meaning is structured and how expression fits the audience, making them more visible and actionable for writers.

Intelligibility refers to what linguists call textuality: the construction of meaning through grammaticality, cohesion, and coherence. While ISO includes cohesion as a guideline under the Understandable principle (5.3.8), coherence—how ideas hang together logically and conceptually—deserves equal visibility, if not more! Cohesion and coherence interact to create clarity of thought, and the challenges involved in maintaining them differ markedly from those involved in shaping tone or choosing vocabulary. Treating intelligibility as its own principle highlights the cognitive work of structuring ideas so readers can follow the logic without undue inference.

Suitability, by contrast, involves adequacy: aligning tone, register, and stylistic choices with the needs, expectations, and cultural context of the intended audience, and the media and channels of communication. ISO situates tone within Understandable (5.3.7) as part of projecting respect and inclusiveness, but, in practice, style involves a broader set of interpersonal and contextual decisions. These choices carry substantial weight in whether readers feel seen, respected, and invited into the text as valid interlocutors.

Separating intelligibility and suitability is thus a practical decision rooted in how writers think and work. Authors routinely struggle with structure and idea-flow on the one hand, and with tone, voice, and audience fit on the other. When these are treated as one principle, the risk is that one dimension, often coherence, receives less attention than it needs for the text to succeed—especially in longer texts required for explanations and learning.

How Quadrants Support a Plain Language Framework

In the Visual Plain Language Guide (find the Guide here), I map written communication onto four quadrants defined by two intersecting dimensions: clarity of thought (cohesion + coherence) and adequacy of expression (tone, register, vocabulary). These dimensions generate four distinct types of text: clear technical communication, clear lay communication, poor technical writing, and poor non-technical or lay writing—what we often call gobbledygook.

This quadrant view makes one point especially visible: clear thinking is transferable. When the underlying ideas are coherent and well-sequenced, it becomes possible to create both a clear technical version and a clear lay version from the same conceptual core. Structure and logic remain stable; only the expression layer changes, as it were.

By contrast, when a document lands in the “poor” half of the chart—whether technical or lay—it usually signals problems in the idea layer, not just the wording. No amount of de-jargoning will fix incoherent content because the problem isn’t in the lexicon; it’s the absence of a rationale.

This quadrant model therefore underscores why I separate intelligibility from suitability in my five-principle framework. Cohesion and coherence give you the internal architecture that supports multiple versions for multiple audiences. Tone and register then allow you to adapt that architecture for readers with different backgrounds, needs, or levels of expertise. Clear thinking first; clear expression follows.

Why Clear Thinking Matters in a Plain Language Framework

In this framework, clarity of thought is essential for reader understanding and it also becomes a powerful tool when creating different versions of the same content for multiple audiences. When the underlying ideas are coherent (logically sequenced and structurally sound), it becomes much easier to adapt the message for audiences with different levels of expertise, cultural backgrounds, or communication needs. A well-formed conceptual architecture allows you to adjust vocabulary, tone, and examples without having to rebuild the message each time. In other words, textuality provides the stable “skeleton” of meaning, and adequacy lets you tailor the “surface” for each group. This separation of layers is particularly useful in multilingual contexts, regulated environments, and collaborative projects where stakeholders require variations of the same content. Starting with a clear, coherent core reduces duplication of effort and results in versions that remain aligned in purpose and substance while meeting readers where they are.

A Clearer Tool for Writers

Ultimately, I use five principles not to complicate the ISO model but to give authors a clearer diagnostic tool. Distinguishing clarity of thought (intelligibility) from kindness of expression (suitability) helps writers recognize which choices affect the logic of the message and which affect its relationship with readers. Both contribute to understanding, but they do so through different mechanisms. Making that distinction explicit supports better planning, drafting, and revising—while remaining fully compatible with the intent and scope of ISO 24495.

Note: Access in the RAISE™ Framework includes organization of the message, structure of the document, multimedia supports, and digital accessibility as defined by WCAG Standards.

This post walks through how the guide came to life: the problems it aimed to solve, the research behind it, and the design decisions that shaped the final framework.

Why I Created the Visual Plain Language Guide

The guide began from a simple question I kept getting in workshops, client projects, and conversations with other communicators:

“Plain language makes sense in theory — but how do I see it?”

Plain language is often taught as a set of writing rules, but what I witnessed repeatedly were moments of visual confusion:

• text structured in ways readers couldn’t navigate

• ideas buried because the hierarchy didn’t guide the eye

• information mapped in the writer’s mind, but not for the reader’s brain

Those who know me a little know I am BIG on cohesion and coherence–the visible links and the underlying clarity of thought that go into good writing. So I set out to show, even if a little, how these come to life. And I started sketching. I started with my existing RAISE™ wheel and it all evolved from there.

Those sketches became motifs: the target for goals (page 9), the puzzle pieces for flow (page 22), the hand and heart for empathy (page 23). Eventually, they evolved into a unified visual language to communicate the concepts of plain language — not within design, but through design.

A Visual Guide — Not a Design Guide

One thing I want readers to understand is: This isn’t a guide about visual design. It’s a guide that uses visual design to teach plain language.

Every icon and layout choice serves a conceptual purpose:

• The RAISE™ principles wheel (page 6) represents balance and interplay.

• The quadrants of clarity (page 7) visualize the differences in clarity and gobbledygook for lay and specialized communication.

• The 10-step circular diagram (page 8) positions clarity as an iterative, non-linear process.

I didn’t set out to create a “pretty PDF.” I set out to make abstract principles visible and memorable. In the Visual Plain Language Guide, each visual is tied to a principle or technique for making communication easier to find, understand, and use.

How the Guide Took Shape

Here’s the development journey behind the scenes:

1. Grounding the guide in international standards

Years before the ISO 24495-1 Plain Language Standard existed, I developed the RAISE™ model—Relevance, Access, Intelligibility, Suitability, and Efficacy—as a practical way to explain what makes communication clear. It grew out of years of observing where communication breaks down and noticing that “understanding” isn’t one thing; it’s a combination of how clearly something is expressed (intelligibility) and how well it fits the reader’s needs and context (suitability).

When ISO began drafting what would become the first international plain language standard, I was invited to join the technical committee responsible for shaping it. It was remarkable to see how closely the developing ISO principles aligned with the structure I had already been using in RAISE™—even though the model predated the standard.

The only real difference is conceptual emphasis. ISO includes “Understandable” as one of its five principles, while in RAISE™ that idea unfolds into its two essential dimensions:

• Intelligibility — the clarity and precision of the expression

• Suitability — the appropriateness and resonance of the style for the intended readers

Together, they capture what understanding actually requires in real-world communication: clarity expressed in a style that meets readers where they are.

Because of this natural alignment, RAISE™ maps cleanly to the ISO standard, allowing the guide to stand on an internationally recognized foundation while preserving the nuance, depth, and reader-centered structure that originally inspired RAISE™.

2. Turning research into approachable visuals

Once I knew the guide needed to show plain language, not just explain it, I returned to the research. Studies on cognitive load, reading behavior, and visual processing all point to the same truth: people understand faster when information is paired with clear, meaningful visuals. Not decorative visuals — but visuals that orient, anchor, and reinforce meaning.

So I began developing a visual vocabulary for the guide: a system of icons, metaphors, colors, and spatial patterns that help readers grasp concepts at a glance. Every visual decision had a purpose:

• The magnifying glass + lightbulb + gear (page 4) conveys “find, understand, use.”

• The audience icons (page 12) show diversity without over-specificity.

• The color palette leans friendly and modern — bright but soft, not childish.

The visuals aren’t decoration; they’re cognitive scaffolding.

3. Building a structure readers can follow at a glance

The guide mirrors the very principles it teaches:

• Clear sections (Goals → Readers → Structure → Design → Words →…)

• Consistent iconography

• Headings that double as meaning cues

• Logical flow from “thinking” steps to “crafting” steps to “refining” steps

This scaffolding is visible on nearly every page, especially the 10-step cycle on page 8 of the Visual Plain Language Guide.

4. Iterating through testing and feedback

Just as step 10 of the guide emphasizes Get Feedback (page 27), I moved through several cycles of:

• testing concepts with writers and editors

• adjusting language

• simplifying visuals

• refining metaphors

• tweaking contrast and spacing

Each iteration made the guide more coherent, lighter, and more intuitively navigable.

Why the Guide Looks Playful

Plain language can feel rigid or even simplistic. I wanted to challenge that perception.

That’s why the guide uses:

• rounded icons, not rigid lines
• asymmetric silhouettes, giving movement and energy
• vivid colors that signal friendliness
• visual metaphors that feel human, like the helping hand or warm lightbulb

This visual tone embodies the empathy at the heart of plain language (step 8, page 23).

Icon System Inside Visual Plain Language Guide

Here are the icons for each of the ten steps of the Visual Plain Language Guide.

What the Visual Plain Language Guide Aims to Do

Ultimately, the guide is meant to:

• make plain language principles more teachable

• help teams create better documents, services, and policies

• support trust, clarity, and usability (page 29)

• show that communication can be both rigorous and inviting

In other words, the guide exists to turn the journey from ideas to results (page 33) into something clearer, lighter, and more human.

Monterey, CA – September 26, 2024 – The upcoming AI in Writing Summit is set to revolutionize the field of plain language writing and clear communication. This groundbreaking event will equip professionals with essential AI tools, tips, and insights to enhance their writing process and stay competitive in the evolving language industry.

In a white paper titled “Successfully Authoring and Translating Plain Language Summaries,” Lionbridge provides a lot of useful information about how to develop and localize clinical trial summaries in plain language. However, Lionbridge got something very wrong. The image above, used to explain plain language summaries in their white paper, shows how Lionbridge pits science writing against plan language. But, science language and plain language are NOT linguistic opposites. Clarity and elegance are the goal in both technical and lay communication.

The antagonist view in Lionbridge’s white paper perpetuates the misconception that science is obscure. Nothing is further from the truth. Science is about transparency, about sharing ideas, methods, and results in valid and replicable ways.

Construing plain language in this way also perpetuates the misconception that plain language is solely about engaging low literacy or disabled readers. Plain language is about clarity, about sharing ideas, explanations, and opinions in logical and coherent ways, no matter who the audience is.

Yes, attention to the audience is one of the pillars of plain language, that’s where adequacy strategies come in: adapting a message for specific purposes and readerships. But plain language is also about textuality: building meaning in the most coherent, succinct, clear, and complete way possible. Textuality applies to all types of text. And while we’re at it, plain language also includes accessibility strategies to help with text is written for readers with disabilities, both physical or cognitive.

Plain language initiatives emerged to address the gobbledygook of bureaucratic and legalistic jargon and verbosity. In the public sector, plain language streamlined citizen access to government information about social benefits. In the private sector, plain language ensured consumer access to information about the safety and quality of products and services. Those were foundational steps in XX century plain language writing. Today, plain language is required in every field, perhaps particularly in science communications between scientists, with the public, and with our policimakers. The NSF estimates that 50% of major bills contain a major scientific and technical component.

Of course, the push for clarity has a long history. In the XV century, King Henry V advocated for English as plain language when he used it in his official communications, preferring to the French and Latin used by government bureaucrats. In the XII century, King Alphonse the Wise had made the same plea for Spanish. In the very first century of our common era, Quintilian, a Roman educator and rhetorician from Hispania and forefather of modern pedagogy, wrote about clarity with style:

“Do not simply promote understanding, prevent misunderstanding…
And, in matters of style, indulge in elegance,
for a writer wins but trivial praise if he gives no more than clarity:
his text seems free from weakness rather than full of strength.”

No one in the plain language community will tell you that plain language is restricted to a certain audience, purpose, or genre. Plain language is about clearing things up, everywhere. Plain language is not a list of dos and donts to mask symptoms. Plain language is an approach to communication for every audience, purpose, and genre. When I teach, I call this approach Plain Language 2.0, to emphasize the idea that a simplistic view of plain language is a disservice to clear communication.

It is true that a great deal of scientific writing is incomprehensible even to specialists in the discipline. Science (and other) writers may draft obscure text on purpose in search of prestige or deception. That is not true scientific writing, it is deceiving writing. Obscure writers mask their own ignorance with meaningless fanfare or try to avoid criticism with convoluted text. Nothing lends itself to discussion better than a clearly expressed thought. Inexperienced writers, too, use confusing syntax and vocabulary to give an appearance of intelligence. Unfortunately, voluntary gibberish has two equally dangerous consequences: bad ideas survive under the cloak of gibberish and good ideas perish.

So, no, scientific writing and plain language are not linguistic opposites. Obscure scientific writing is simply a token of non-plain writing, and, as with all obscure language, we must counteract it with clarity.

I include two examples of texts about the same topics, one written for experts and the other one for lay audiences. You will see that in each case, the obscurity does not stem from complex words or structure alone. It also stems from faulty grammar, mismatched temporal references, and poor logical connections.

Please, help me spread the word: Plain language is for everyone, laymen and specialists alike!

In this moment of painful events–that bear witness to how much work we have ahead–education and clear information are not just essential, they are the only option. In doing my part from my professional place, I am applying plain language to promote respect and tolerance.

Among many other pieces of information that require a clarity makeover are clauses to prevent  discrimination. If you do not have an anti-discrimination clause, don’t just use one in gibberish; instead, adapt it to your audience in plain language! Education starts with clarity.

This is one example of how much clearer the message can be. Some of the techniques used here:
1-ditched repetition
2-use of cohesive ties
3-deletion of obvious content

BEFORE:

XYZ does not support and will not tolerate its Service being used to discriminate against others, especially when based on race, religion, sex, sexual orientation, age, disability, ancestry or national origin. You are not permitted to use the Service in a manner which would or would likely incite, promote or support such discrimination and you must not use the Service to incite or promote hostility or violence. If we believe in our sole determination that your use of the Service is being used to discriminate, especially if based on race, religion, sex, sexual orientation, age, disability, ancestry or national origin, we may permanently or temporarily terminate or suspend your access to the Service without notice and liability for any reason.

AFTER:

At XYZ, we will not allow you to use our Service to unlawfully discriminate or support hostility or violence based on race, religion, sex, sexual orientation, age, disability, ancestry or national origin.

If you do, we may terminate or suspend your access to the Service without notice or liability.

In a recent series of edits and translations, I found myself repeatedly fixing “isotopic breaks” that AI or inexperienced writers and translators had missed. An isotopy is a set of words and expressions that echo an idea throughout the text. Some linguists define it as a set of expressions linked by a common semantic denominator.

Bear with me, I know isotopy seems like such a technical term! But it simply means “same topic,” from combining the Greek-derived forms iso, same, and topic, subject of discussion. Maintaining isotopy means that won’t veer off-topic, introduce contradictory references, or mix figures of speech from different spheres.

Broken isotopies occur when the context for a word wasn’t right or the word wasn’t right for the context. In reference to my headline image, you’d hardly bring up the word “delectable” to describe a slice of pizza dumped on the street.

Now, the easiest way to create isotopy is to use words that belong together to weave threads of meaning. Throughout the text, words that belong together lend unity to the text by repeating, alluding to, or adding details about an certain idea by using related words and phrases, and figures of speech.

You will notice that the threads of meaning you create can respond to different connections. Some words are linked together by more abstract connections, some share more concrete ties. And it is useful to understand the differences. Here are some of the main types of connections between words:

Conceptual Isotopies

In conceptual isotopies, words and phrases are linked by meaning. These clusters include words that share semantic features and belong to the same field. For instance, table and furniture have meaning in common. As you may know, table is a hyponym or more specific word than furniture, which is a more general word or hypernym. Words like table, chairs, desk, dresser, sofa, etc. are related by definition. Of course this conceptual relatedness can become quite abstract, as with mathematical concepts like the periodic functions sine, cosine, and tangent — and their reciprocals, cosecant, secant, and cotangent.

Pragmatic Isotopies

In pragmatic isotopies , words are linked by habits and cultural ties. These clusters emerge from customary practices and cultural norms rather than through intrinsically shared meaning. Consider the words table, bowl, and bacon. What do they have in common? In essence, not much. They do not presuppose each other or overlap in meaning. Yet, they come seamlessly together in the context of ‘American breakfast.’ The fact that these items do not coexist in the breakfast practices of other cultures is testament to their conceptual distinction.

Sometimes, a set of cultural connections is so ingrained that we forget the connections depend on cultural norms. Depending on the audience you write for, relying on their ability to connect culturally related ideas can hinder their comprehension.

For example, if you use references to American football’s stop-and-go nature with 60 minutes of regulation time but only 11 minutes of action, you may lose a British reader accustomed to some 90 minutes of ongoing action in rugby or soccer.

Familiar Expressions

In sharing information with a reader, it is generally a good idea to add new information in the context of familiar information to scaffold understanding and learning. Occasionally, it is ok to surprise your reader.  So, in writing and translation, it serves you well to know the crystallized expressions used in your subject matter. These expressions often started a innovative figures of speech but have lost their creative value and they are now so common that we no longer notice them. Among such expressions are:

• Figures of speech that have become common terms, like “mouth of a river” or “eye of a needle.”
• Figures of speech that have become collocations, like “wave of enthusiasm” or “a storm of allegations.” Collocations are words used together much more often than other equally reasonable options (maybe “gust of enthusiasm” or “hurricane of allegations.”)
• Figures of speech that have become idioms, like “being over the moon,” “having butterflies in your stomach.” Idioms are formulaic or fixed expressions that no longer have a startling effect for their figurative meaning even when they do not mean what the words literally say.

Words in Context

All of these microcosms of meaning come into play when you write or translate and need to bring your words to the right context and bring the right context to your words. Context matters because:

1. words are polysemic, and
2. people are not only different from each other in their abilities and interests, but also wear many hats as individuals.

About a): The fact that a word looks the same in different contexts is not enough indication that they will mean the same. We call homonyms those words that have the same spelling (or pronunciation in speech) but different meanings. Words can even change their part of speech and look the same.

In translation, we need to pay additional attention to:

• false cognates: words that look alike in two languages but mean different things. For instance, embarrassed and embarazada (meaning ashamed versus pregnant) or fabric and fábrica (cloth versus factory.
• contextual translations of a single word that requires different words in the target language. For instance, one of the words of the moment, mask, can translate into Spanish as máscara, antifaz, careta, barbijo, gafas, ocultar, and camuflar, among others (meaning mask, decorative mask, fencing mask, surgical mask, scuba mask, to hide, to conceal)

About b): We need to adapt content and form to our audience. This becomes particularly tricky because audiences differ not only in shared group features but in individual features as well. For instance, the content, style, and depth I find appropriate, useful, interesting, or fun as a mom may not be the same than those I favor as a professional, a friend, a daughter, or a boss.

Nowadays, with so much automation at work, writers, translators, and editors need to be particularly wary of context to make sure the right meaning is surfacing in the right way at the right time!

In October 2019, the World Economic Forum, the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security, and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation worked on a pandemic simulation (a mock-up) called Event 201.

The simulation was an exercise to understand the challenges of a pandemic and figure out ways to respond. For the scenario, the group modeled a fictional coronavirus pandemic. It was not and could not have been a prediction of Covid-19.

They hypothesized (imagined) that a new type of coronavirus appeared. There are now 7 types of coronaviruses that affect humans. Coronaviruses are common in animals (particularly, bats) and, occasionally, they “jump” to humans. They are called “zoonotic,” literally meaning a disease that humans get from animals.

The Purpose

Real epidemic events are increasing, and have health, social, and economic consequences. Therefore, it is important to understand the risks, measures, and collaboration that would be needed during a pandemic.

The Simulation

Event 201 simulates an outbreak of a fictional coronavirus first transmitted from pigs to people in farms in Brazil. Remember, this is all a mock-up, running on computers, much like a video game. The model was based on the coronavirus SARS-CoV. It is a pathogen (disease-causing agent) that causes Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome. This is a real illness that affects your airways and causes dry cough, headache, discomfort, and body aches. Some infected people suffer from diarrhea, and most develop pneumonia.

The spread in the model is slow at first. But, eventually, the virus adjusts to its new human hosts and gets good at jumping from person to person. Person to person transmission rapidly grows in dense, low-income neighborhoods, and finds its way to big cities.

From big cities in South America, the disease travels by flight to Portugal, the United States, and China and then elsewhere. At first, some countries seem able to control it, but the diseases comes back (is reintroduced) and no country can keep it under control. The simulation uses only 300 US and 300 international cities in its model.

In the first year of the simulation, no vaccine is developed. The only thing the simulation had to help the sick was a fictional antiviral drug (a medicine to treat the sick). But, in the simulation, that drug cannot stop the spread of the disease.

Since this fictional coronavirus is a new pathogen, all humans are “susceptible”, meaning we are all prone to catching the disease (like we are for real about Covid-19). For old diseases, humans develop “herd immunity” (also called community immunity). The word “herd” refers to the fact that we humans are indeed a pack of animals in nature! Herd immunity means that enough people can resist an infectious disease because they got a vaccine or caught the illness. Enough immune people make it unlikely for the disease to spread from person to person. (This is why vaccines are SOO important! People who cannot get a vaccine, like newborns and those chronically ill, get protection from the community barrier.)

During the initial months of the simulated pandemic, the number of cases doubles every week. The simulation also keeps track of the deaths and the social and economic consequences, which become more and more severe.

The simulation ends after 18 months of pandemic spread. In its fictional outcome, the disease kills 65 million people. The spread slows down at this point because there are very few “susceptible” people left. That means people are no longer prone to catching the disease because most have caught it and recovered.

The simulation suggests that the spread of an infectious disease like the fictional coronavirus would continue until there is an effective vaccine or until 80-90 % of the global population has been exposed. From that point on, the disease becomes an “endemic” childhood disease. An endemic disease is a disease that is constantly present in an area or population, but in relatively low frequency. For example, HIV is endemic in the US, where 1 in 300 people are infected, ) and Hepatitis B (HBV) is endemic throughout the world.

The Takeways

The group concluded that a new severe pandemic would cause grave illness , suffering, and social and economic disruptions worldwide. To them, the Event 201 pandemic simulation of 2019 “vividly demonstrated” gaps in readiness and in global communication and collaboration needed to respond to such a threat. They issued recommendations for “public-private cooperation for pandemic preparedness and response.”

As the event organizers emphasize, their simulation is not a prediction of our actual situation. But some of their recommendations are proving useful in the current, and actual, pandemic of Covid-19.

One more fact I want to highlight about our real Covid-19 pandemic: the unintended good from this unexpected evil is that we might be helping curve climate change! The shelter-in-place has slowed down pollution and greenhouse gases. It has been a “vacation for the planet” (in the words of my daughter) that we should consider giving again, for everyone’s sake.

Covid-19 is causing the most disruptive effect on lifestyle seen in the 21^st century. The news on global climate change didn’t prompt people to change habits. The international economic crises of the late 2000s didn’t prompt people to change habits. But a direct threat on individuals by a tiny pathogen has prompted people to change habits.

As a consequence of necessary quarantines, self-imposed cautionary measures, health experts prompted social distance, and government mandated travel restrictions, Mother Earth and all its creatures, including us humans, are getting an unexpected break. This break comes in the form of cleaner air.

Satellites operated by NASA and the European Space Agency, orbiting the planet to monitor air quality, picked up a remarkable change: a substantial drop in the concentration of nitrogen dioxide (NO2) pollution compared to average levels of pollution. The decline is particularly prevalent over China and northern Italy. Nitrogen dioxide is a harmful chemical emitted by gas vehicles, gas motors, power plants, and any machine that burns fossil fuels.

In China, the impact is so stark, it could be presented as a before and after makeover. The image below shows, from NASA, shows the concentration (density) of nitrogen dioxide in China before and after Covid-19 quarantines went into effect. NASA announced this finding with this headline: Airborne Nitrogen Dioxide Plummets Over China.

In northern Italy, a video produced by ESA (the European Space Agency) shows the steady decrease in emissions of nitrogen dioxide over Italy during the last month. Italy had its first reported case of Covid-19 in mid-February and since then a steady slow down of movement, until the Prime Minister Giuseppe Conti ordered a lockdown of northern Italy on March 8.

The slowdown of activity, which includes power plants and industrial facilities ramping down, has resulted in a drop of air pollution levels tallied so far to be near 30%. Lauri Myllyvirta, lead analyst at the Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air, said to NPR that he has “spoken to people in Shanghai who said that it’s been some of the most pristine blue skies that they remember over the winter.”

Mr. Myllyvirta has worked on the first study to quantify the burden that air pollution from fossil fuels inflicts globally. The cost is about US$8 billion every day, amounting to over 3% of global GDP. Myllyvirta explains that this “far exceeds the cost of transitioning to clean energy.”

In terms of health, epidemiologists explain that it would be a misrepresentation to describe air pollution reductions as a benefit from coronavirus. In the short term, individuals, especially for those with underlying conditions, are at greater risk from the virus than from pollution.

However, this sizable impact should get us all thinking about the long term effects, after the virus has subsided and/or effective treatment and prevention developed (which are being pursued aggressively by companies like Regeneron, and research centers like Sunnybroook.)

In his interview with NPR, Myllyvirta pointed out that after the global financial crisis, which did have a temporary effect on emissions, governments rolled out “the biggest stimulus package in the history of mankind”. This drove global emissions up for years, worsening an already fragile situation for nature.

Hopefully, as a species, we can learn from this and reduce air pollution permanently. At the human level, we need the reduction because air pollution is a serious risk to health. Fine particles from pollution enter the bloodstream through the lungs and cause asthma, heart attacks, respiratory problems, cancer, and neurological disorders such as dementia and Parkinson’s disease. The World Health Organization estimates that almost 5 million people die each year from causes directly related to air pollution. At the broader level of nature and all of its creatures, we need the reduction because if we have evidence of these terrible effects on us, how can we think we are not affecting the flora and fauna of the world?

Once the coronavirus crisis is over, what can we do go about our lives in better more responsible and joyous ways than before?