Wuhan coronavirus: US health experts hosted mock pandemic 3 months ago, with expected death toll of 65 million!
The Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security hosted a mock exercise on October 18, 2019, where they modeled a fictional coronavirus pandemic. The mock exercise back then had said that such an outbreak could kill 65 million.
Now in the wake of the Wuhan coronavirus outbreak and to dispel any rumors, the Center has issued a statement, which says that the mock exercise was not a prediction of the current situation. Instead, the exercise served to highlight “preparedness and response challenges” that would likely arise in a very severe pandemic.
“In October 2019, the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security hosted a pandemic tabletop exercise called Event 201 with partners, the World Economic Forum and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. Recently, the Center for Health Security has received questions about whether that pandemic exercise predicted the current novel coronavirus outbreak in China,” says the statement.
It further reads: “To be clear, the Center for Health Security and partners did not make a prediction during our tabletop exercise. For the scenario, we modeled a fictional coronavirus pandemic, but we explicitly stated that it was not a prediction. We are not now predicting that the nCoV-2019 outbreak will kill 65 million people. Although our tabletop exercise included a mock novel coronavirus, the inputs we used for modeling the potential impact of that fictional virus are not similar to nCoV-2019.”
On December 31, 2019, the World Health Organization (WHO) was first informed of the many cases of pneumonia detected in Wuhan City in the Hubei province of China. Since then, the disease caused by coronavirus has killed 106 and sickened over 4,500.
The 3.5-hour multimedia global pandemic simulation exercise was conducted in New York City by the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security in collaboration with the World Economic Forum and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. At the video-driven exercise, players were presented with a scenario that reveals unresolved and controversial policy and economic issues that could be solved with sufficient political will, financial investment, and attention. According to available information, it involved around 15 leaders of global businesses, governments and public health.
“The simulation will underscore the need for the inclusion of private industry, along with business-government collaboration, in planning ahead to mitigate the devastating worldwide economic and societal impact of pandemics,” said experts.
According to researchers, the world has seen a growing number of epidemic events in recent years, about 200 per year, which has strained already limited resources. They said that a large global pandemic would be disruptive to health, economies and society. Economic studies show that pandemics could cause an average annual economic loss of 0.7% of global GDP — or $570 billion.
The researchers said experts agree that it is only a matter of time before one of these epidemics becomes global—a pandemic with potentially catastrophic consequences. A severe pandemic, which becomes “Event 201,” would require reliable cooperation among several industries, national governments, and key international institutions, they explained.
“Event 201 and its predecessor simulations like Clade X are crucial tools to understand not only what is needed to effectively respond to global public health crises, but also the consequences of what happens when we are not prepared,” Chris Elias, president of global development at the Gates Foundation, had said in a statement.
The exercise highlighted major unmet global vulnerabilities and international system challenges posed by pandemics. It illustrated areas where public/private partnerships will be necessary during the response to a severe pandemic in order to diminish large-scale economic and societal consequences.
“The Event 201 pandemic exercise vividly demonstrated a number of these important gaps in pandemic preparedness as well as some of the elements of the solutions between the public and private sectors that will be needed to fill them,” said experts. Based on the exercise, experts made several recommendations. They proposed that governments, international organizations and businesses should plan now for how essential corporate capabilities will be utilized during a largescale pandemic.
“During a severe pandemic, public sector efforts to control the outbreak are likely to become overwhelmed. But industry assets, if swiftly and appropriately deployed, could help to save lives and reduce economic losses. Governments should work now to identify the most critical areas of need and reach out to industry players with the goal of finalizing agreements in advance of the next large pandemic,” said the team.