Community News

What is Event 201, and why should we as a community know about it?

Published

4 years ago

November 13, 2020

BY SIMONE J. SMITH

“To be clear, the Centre for Health Security and partners did not make a prediction during our table-top exercise. For the scenario, we modelled a fictional coronavirus pandemic, but we explicitly stated that it was not a prediction. Instead, the exercise served to highlight preparedness and response challenges that would likely arise in a very severe pandemic.”

John Hopkins Centre for Health Security

Why do we prepare? We prepare so that we are ready and equipped to handle whatever it is that is coming our way. We know that we cannot mitigate some of the challenges that may arise in any given situation but being prepared does keep us ahead of the curve.

The importance of emergency preparedness cannot be overstated. Our world governments have a duty of care they are obligated to fulfil. This means that they should have plans and tools to help keep people safe and informed about potentially dangerous situations.

The COVID-19 pandemic has shown us exactly why planning is so important. The lack of a plan has had devastating effects on our world and has led to: confusing messages and uninformed political leaders. We know that disorganized leadership can put people in harm’s way, slow down response time, and make it more difficult to get operations back up and running.

With how everything has been handled with this pandemic, many of us would say that as a global system, we were not prepared, but what if I told you that was FALSE?

On Friday, October 18th, 2019 from 8:45 a.m. – 12:30 p.m., at The Pierre Hotel in New York, an invitation only audience of nearly 130 people attended an exercise named Event 201.

Clade X Pandemic Exercise Trailer

A team from the John Hopkins Center for Health Security, along with: the World Economic forum, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, funded by the Open Philanthropy Project hosted a 3.5 hour pandemic tabletop exercise that simulated a series of dramatic, scenario-based facilitated discussions, confronting difficult dilemmas associated with response to a hypothetical, but scientifically plausible, pandemic.

In attendance were 15 global business, government, and public health leaders. The simulation exercise highlighted unresolved real-world policy and economic issues that could be solved with sufficient political will, financial investment, and attention now and in the future, in the case of a global pandemic, kind of like, I don’t know, the COVID-19 Pandemic.

The purpose of Event 201 was to examine and discuss the growing number of epidemic events occurring annually. Epidemic events were increasing, what was observed was the disruption that they caused to health, economies, and society. It was noted that managing these events were straining global capacity, and the experts agreed that it was only a matter of time before one of these epidemics became global. This severe pandemic would become Event 201, and would require reliable cooperation among several industries, national governments, and key international institutions.

What is ironic about this meeting is that about six weeks later, the first illness from the coronavirus was reported in Wuhan, China. I am going to go over what was discussed at this meeting, but I want to point out one more thing first; not only did the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation participate in and help set up the pandemic simulation of a coronavirus outbreak, but they just so happen to fund the group who owns the patent to the deadly coronavirus.

You ready? Let’s talk about Event 201.

Event 201 simulates an outbreak of a novel zoonotic coronavirus transmitted from bats to pigs to people that eventually becomes efficiently transmissible from person to person, leading to a severe pandemic. The pathogen was modelled on SARS and started in pig farms in Brazil. It was very quiet and slow at first, but then it started to spread rapidly.

Once the epidemic exploded in South America, it was then exported by air travel to: Portugal, the United States, and China. It then went global. In the simulation, some countries at first were able to control it, but then eventually they lost control.

The whole human population is susceptible during the initial months of the pandemic, and the cases increase exponentially, doubling every week. As the cases and deaths accumulate, the economic and societal consequences become increasingly severe.

The scenario ends at the 18-month point, with 65 million deaths. The pandemic slows due to the decreasing number of susceptible people, but the pandemic continues at some rate until there is an effective vaccine or until 80-90% of the global population has been exposed. From that point on, it is likely to be an endemic childhood disease. There is no possibility of a vaccine being available in the first year, and there is a fictional antiviral drug (Hydroxychloroquine, which is not mentioned by name) that can help the sick but not significantly limit spread of the disease.

“Once you’re in the midst of a severe pandemic, your options are limited. The greatest good can happen with pre-planning.”

Eric Toner, Senior Scholar at the Centre for Health Security, John Hopkins University

I want our readers to take a minute and read through Event 201 again. Read it as many times as it takes to identify the similarities that exist with what was predicted, and what has happened in 2020. Then I want you to start asking some questions:

Was our Prime Minister Justin Trudeau at this meeting?

Were any of our leaders in Canada at this meeting?

If our leaders were at this meeting, were they taking notes?

What did they learn?

With such details that are so similar to what has happened with the COVID-19 pandemic, why has there been so much confusion? Why did we as a nation not have a plan?

There are so many questions, and not enough answers.

Event 201 Pandemic Exercise: Segment 1, Intro and Medical Countermeasures (MCM) Discussion

Event 201 Pandemic Exercise: Segment 1, Intro and Medical Countermeasures (MCM) Discussion