Just over three months ago, a “high-level pandemic exercise” entitled “Event 201” was held in New York City. On October 18th the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security, in conjunction with the World Economic Forum and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, brought together “15 leaders of business, government, and public health” to simulate a scenario in which a coronavirus pandemic was ravaging the planet. The current coronavirus outbreak that originated in China did not begin until December, and so at that time it was supposedly just a hypothetical exercise. The following comes from the official page for this event…
The Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security in partnership with the World Economic Forum and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation hosted Event 201, a high-level pandemic exercise on October 18, 2019, in New York, NY. The exercise 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.
I find it quite interesting that the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation was involved, because they are also financial backers of the institute that was granted a U.S. patent for “an attenuated coronavirus” in November 2018.
It appears that the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation has been quite interested in the threat posed by coronaviruses for quite some time.
Eric Toner, a researcher at the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security, spearheaded putting “Event 201” together. In his scenario, a coronavirus outbreak had begun on Brazil’s pig farms…
Toner’s simulation imagined a fictional virus called CAPS. The analysis, part of a collaboration with the World Economic Forum and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, looked at what would happen if a pandemic originated in Brazil’s pig farms.
Even though the outbreak was quite limited at first, Toner’s scenario ultimately showed that a coronavirus pandemic could kill 65 million people…
The pretend outbreak started small: Farmers began coming down with symptoms that resembled the flu or pneumonia. From there, the virus spread to crowded and impoverished urban neighborhoods in South America.
Flights were canceled, and travel bookings dipped by 45%. People disseminated false information on social media.
After six months, the virus had spread around the globe. A year later, it had killed 65 million people.
Let us certainly hope that this current outbreak does not evolve into that sort of a nightmare.
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