Griefing, such as players intentionally spreading Corrupted Blood to others, was one of the aspects of the Corrupted Blood study that has been criticized as lacking a real-world basis; Dr. Lofgren expressed in the wake of the coronavirus epidemic that "one of the critiques we got from a lot of people, both gamers and scientists, was over this idea of griefing, ... How griefing isn't really analogous to anything that takes place in the real world. People aren't intentionally getting people sick. And they might not be intentionally getting people sick, but wilfully ignoring your potential to get people sick is pretty close to that. You start to see people like 'oh this isn't a big deal, I'm not going to change my behavior.' ... Epidemics are a social problem... Minimizing the seriousness of something is sort of real-world griefing."
— Wikipedia