VaxVsBug

VaxVsBug is a static educational web app that compares:

• vaccine side effects
• disease symptoms and outcomes
• the effect of community vaccine rate on disease risk

It is designed to be fast, lightweight, and easy to inspect or extend.

Live site:

• https://vaxvsbug.com

Screenshot

What It Does

• compares vaccine side effects with disease symptoms and outcomes side by side
• visualizes risk with two 100-cell grids
• lets the user adjust community vaccine rate
• simulates one vaccination outcome and one infection outcome with Try your luck
• supports multiple diseases from a JSON dataset
• supports localization

Interpretation and Scope

VaxVsBug is an educational comparison tool.

It is designed to illustrate how:

• infectious disease risk changes with community vaccination
• disease symptoms and outcomes compare alongside vaccine side-effect risk in a simplified scenario

It does not provide real-world risk predictions or medical guidance.

Disease risk in the app reflects population-level transmission dynamics, while vaccine side effects reflect individual-level probabilities. These are different types of risk, and the comparison is intended for exploration rather than decision-making.

Tech Stack

• plain HTML
• plain CSS
• plain JavaScript
• no framework
• no build step
• no backend

App Structure

App/
  index.html
  style.css
  app.js
  data.json
  js/
  locales/
  img/
  docs/

Main Files

• index.html - app shell and static panel content
• style.css - layout, visual system, animation, responsive behavior
• app.js - app bootstrap and module wiring
• data.json - disease, vaccine, source, and probability data
• js/ - app modules
• locales/ - language files
• docs/Environmental-Hostility.md - calibration notes for environmental_hostility
• docs/Data-Integrity-Notes.md - notes on how grounded the disease and vaccine probabilities are

Running Locally

Because the app uses fetch() for JSON and locale files, run it from a local web server rather than opening the HTML file directly.

Examples:

cd App
python3 -m http.server 8000

Then open:

http://localhost:8000/

URL Parameters

• ?lang=en
• ?lang=fi
• ?disease=measles

Example:

https://vaxvsbug.com/?lang=fi&disease=polio

Data Notes

The app uses a comparative scenario model.

In particular:

• environmental_hostility is an app-level composite variable that represents overall transmission pressure in the shared scenario
• it combines multiple factors into a single value to keep the model intuitive and comparable across diseases
• it is not a direct official metric
• disease outcomes are simplified into a UI-friendly educational model
• the data, wording, and source links have been manually reviewed

Supporting notes are documented in:

• docs/Environmental-Hostility.md
• docs/Data-Integrity-Notes.md

Localization

Current languages:

• English
• Finnish
• French
• Spanish
• German
• Portuguese (Brazil)
• Arabic
• Japanese
• Chinese (Simplified)

The app is structured so more languages can be added through the locale files in locales/.

Contributing

Helpful contribution areas:

• language additions and copy review
• disease-by-disease data audit
• source verification
• UI polish and accessibility improvements

Support VaxVsBug

If you find VaxVsBug useful, you can support its continued development:

• GitHub Sponsors – support the open-source work, updates, and future improvements directly.
  Become a GitHub Sponsor

• Ko-fi – make a one-off tip or small donation to support the project.
  Support on Ko-fi

  

Thank you for helping support independent open-source educational work.

See Sanara Creations for my multidisciplinary work, both solo and in collaboration with others.