And good morning and welcome again on behalf of the Center for Health Security, the Bill
and Melinda Gates Foundation, and the World Economic Forum.
Welcome to Event 201.
We're at the start of what's looking like it will be a severe pandemic.
We know in panic, in psychology of panic, people start hoarding.
People start freaking out and wondering, what should I do?
And then countries start doing it, and then there's all kinds of dysfunctional decisions
made.
The line between disinformation and misinformation is not always an easy one to find, and the
reality is governments need to be willing to do things that are out of their historical
perspective for the most part.
It's really a war footing that we need to be on.
It can happen quickly.
A Marshall-type plan, I don't mean to say that exactly, but a Marshall plane, they can
go into effect and stimulate change very quickly.
The distrust relates to the health system more generally.
A step up from the part of the governments on enforcement actions against fake news,
right?
Some of us, this new regulations that come in place about how we deal with fake news.
I think a couple of things we have to consider are, even before this began, the anti-vaccine
movement was very strong, and this is something specifically through social media that has
spread.
How do we do the research to come up with the right vaccines to help prevent the continuation
of this?
How do we get the right information out there?
How do we communicate the right information to ensure that the public has trust in these
vaccines that we're creating?
And secondly, news organizations in some countries are right now under a lot of pressure from
their governments to provide politically favorable news.
And so we have to think about, this isn't just the United States where we sometimes
take the freedom of press for granted.
There are countries where the news organizations are owned by the government, and how are they
disseminating information, and what do we need to be thinking about?
How do we communicate with those governments to ensure that misinformation and disinformation
is not being spread?
The truth is, more people did die in the 1918 pandemic than had died in World War I and
World War II combined.
The scenes you have just witnessed may lead you to believe you are hearing from top government
officials in response to the world's ongoing coronavirus pandemic.
You're not.
You are, in fact, getting glimpses of a three and a half hour pandemic exercise titled Event
201, a hypothetical fire drill scenario on the premise of a potential catastrophic global
crisis.
Event 201 was hosted by the John Hopkins Center for Health Security in partnership with the
World Economic Forum and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.
The event outlined managing disruption to travel, health, economies, and trade, citing
various countermeasures, vaccine implementation, and martial law, promoting globalism as a
solution to emergency events.
This event took place in October of 2019, two months before news of the outbreak surfaced.
The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation coincidentally funded the group Pure Bright Institute, who
owns the patent to the deadly virus and are currently working on a vaccine to solve the
crisis.
Please understand the news clips you are about to watch were part of this pandemic exercise
and not actual news footage.
On behalf of our center and our partners, the World Economic Forum and the Bill and
Melinda Gates Foundation, I'd like to extend a very warm welcome to our audience here in
New York, as well as our larger virtual audience participating online today.
The goal of the event 201 exercise is to illustrate the potential consequences of a pandemic and
the kinds of societal and economic challenges they would pose.
The board is comprised of highly experienced leaders from business, public health, and
civil society.
The board's recommendations are aimed at top decision makers in national governments,
global business, and international organizations.
The event 201 scenario is fictional, but it's based on public health principles, epidemiologic
modeling, and assessment of past outbreaks.
In other words, we've created a pandemic that could realistically occur.
The scenario you will be presented with this morning could easily become one shared reality
one day.
I fully expect that we will be confronted by a fast-moving, highly lethal pandemic of
respiratory pathogens.
The nature of pandemics is that many countries will be affected at the same time.
This is particularly true with respiratory pathogens, as they are often transmitted by
asymptomatic persons.
They spread fast.
It began in healthy-looking pigs, months, perhaps years ago.
A new coronavirus spread silently within herds.
Gradually, farmers started getting sick.
Infected people got a respiratory illness with symptoms ranging from mild flu-like signs
to severe pneumonia.
The sickest required intensive care.
Many died.
At first, the spread was limited to those with close contacts, healthcare personnel,
co-workers and families.
But now, it's spreading rapidly throughout local communities.
International travel has turned local epidemics into a pandemic spanning the globe.
Just three months ago, caps started in South America, but has now reached several countries
with more than 30,000 cases and nearly 2,000 deaths.
Again, you are watching a meeting that took place two months prior to the news of the
coronavirus outbreak.
Event 201 was broken up into five segments, including discussions among high-level leaders
of global businesses, governments, policy and public health.
We are only going to show some highlights from these discussions, because the event
is over three hours long.
Censorship seemed to be a top priority as the event emphasized the need to maintain
the official narrative by censoring social media, recruiting corporate and faith-based
leaders to promote government propaganda, while simultaneously flooding mainstream media
with the official narrative.
Remember, this is a simulation, and no actual pandemic had taken place prior to the event
201 meeting.
We know that social media is now the primary way that many people get their news, so interruptions
to these platforms could curb the spread of misinformation, but could also limit access
to information from legitimate sources.
National governments are considering or have already implemented a range of interventions
to combat misinformation.
Some governments have taken control of national access to the internet, others are censoring
websites and social media content, and a small number have shut down internet access
completely to prevent the spread of misinformation.
Penalties have been put in place for spreading harmful falsehoods, including arrests.
Alarming news emerging from social media companies today about the CAPS pandemic.
Twitter and Facebook are reporting they've identified and deleted a disturbing number
of accounts dedicated to spreading disinformation about the outbreak.
For more on this, we go to our correspondent Catalina Parks.
Countries are reacting in different ways as to how best to manage the overwhelming amounts
of dis and misinformation circulating over the internet.
In some cases, limited internet shutdowns are being implemented to quell panic.
To me, it is clear countries need to make strong efforts to manage both mis and disinformation.
We know social media companies are working around the clock to combat these disinformation
campaigns.
The task of identifying every bad actor is immense, and experts agree that new disinformation
campaigns are being generated every day.
This is a huge problem that's going to keep us from ending the pandemic and might even
lead to the fall of governments, as we saw in the Arab Spring.
If the solution means controlling and reducing access to information, I think it's the right
choice.
I agree with Kevin, this is a big problem and doesn't even account for the massive amounts
of misinformation being generated by legitimate users about the pandemic.
But it's not just trolls who are spreading the fake news.
It's often political leaders themselves.
Who's to judge what's real or not?
Would we trust every government to separate truth from lies?
I think this is more than just keeping the bad information out.
It's also about making sure real public health information reaches the public.
News is found from outlets other than social media.
News organisations, public health groups and companies need to help people take the right
actions to protect themselves by promoting accurate, real information about the outbreak.
OK, for more on this, we're going to get a briefing from our communications expert, Dr.
Sell.
I would start by the social media platforms have to step forward and recognise the moment
to assert that they're a technology platform and not a broadcaster is over.
They in fact have to be a participant in broadcasting accurate information and partnering with the
scientific and health communities to counterweight, if not flood the zone of accurate information,
because to put the genie back in the bottle of the misinformation and disinformation is
nigh impossible.
My team has been monitoring the public response and on various social media channels and cable
networks there has been some conspiracy theories that are around about the potential that pharmaceutical
companies or the UN have released this for their own benefit.
So as we move forward, obviously trust in pharmaceuticals and government is very important
at this moment.
And so as we move forward with developing the right scenarios, we have to make sure
that the public communication is a major part of that because of these conspiracy theories.
Thank you.
We have to close.
I'll give you 30 seconds.
Okay.
But this fully supports this input.
We should not search for the perfect solution right now.
We run against time and if conspiracy theories like this come up already, so we are on the
edge of hysterical reactions and then it gets out of control.
And that's the thing what should be the main driver for us now to find a solution.
But let's be clear.
People trust less and less what comes from government.
They're actually enabling many sources of information, Google, Facebook, the free to
air media networks, ensuring that they are equipped companies who will talk to their
staff.
And we know that very often these days people believe much more something that will come
from their company than they will believe something that comes from government.
Tim and Chris, I'm sorry.
No, I think a complimentary tactic too is to tap faith-based organizations and civil
society and other institutions to recruit them also to basically almost at a grassroots
level continue to basically have the integrity of the information.
So I just pick up on the daily briefings or twice daily briefings during H1N1 WHO filled
the parking lot in Geneva with the global press and provided them daily updates on what
was happening.
And I think that's a manifestation of flood, meaning you have to lead and lead regularly.
Scientists think each infected person in turn infects on average two more people.
This disease is proving more transmissible than SARS or MERS and about as contagious
as influenza.
Essentially the cumulative number of cases is doubling every week.
At this rate, we can expect to see 16 times as many cases in a month unless we find a
way to interrupt transmission.
The virus appears to be spreading rapidly in densely populated and impoverished neighborhoods
in some mega cities in South America.
CAPS is a serious respiratory disease.
More than half of the recognized cases have required hospital care, creating a huge strain
on healthcare systems.
The fatality rate is about 10 percent.
For comparison, CAPS is about as lethal as SARS and two to four times more lethal than
the 1918 influenza pandemic, the worst pandemic on record.
Even so, some people only exhibit mild flu-like symptoms, not requiring treatment in a hospital.
Alarmingly, those people are able to walk around and spread the virus, not realizing
they are doing so.
Even worse, international travelers have been arriving at their destinations symptom-free,
but within a matter of hours, becoming ill.
Travel-related cases have blossomed into outbreaks in a number of locations and have quickly
grown faster than health authorities could respond and contain them.
In other places, physicians have quickly recognized the symptoms of CAPS and have been able to
isolate infected individuals and avoid an outbreak, for now.
Several public health experts are very concerned about this disease.
Because it appears the virus is readily transmitted through the air from person to person, essentially
all people are susceptible.
Experts agree unless it is quickly controlled, it could lead to a severe pandemic, an outbreak
that circles the globe and affects people everywhere.
Models developed by leading public health authorities indicate a CAPS pandemic could
lead to an outcome worse than the 1918 influenza, which killed 50 to 100 million people worldwide.
Given the global population is four times larger than it was in 1918, if these models
prove accurate, we could be looking at hundreds of millions of deaths over the next year or
two.
This is a plandemic that will change society forever.
As you hear them discuss social media censorship in the simulation, we are currently seeing
that play out right before our eyes.
Perhaps now you can see why the heavy hand of government has come down hard on vaccine
information that doesn't agree with the current paradigm, including government representatives
contacting Amazon to remove streaming availability of anti-vaccine documentaries, Facebook page
removal, censorship and placing banners over the content and manipulating Google and YouTube
search results.
Vaccines are part of the end game solution.
However, seeing this simulation become a reality, it presents itself as a planned demic.
Therefore, why would you trust the cure that came from the same people that created the
crisis?
The cure could be worse than the disease.
The first emerging policy crisis for which we need this board's recommendations regards
global allocation and distribution of medical countermeasures.
By medical countermeasures, we mean vaccines, drugs and diagnostics and other medical supplies
to help us combat the CAPS pandemic.
I know we would all agree that if we had a vaccine in hand for CAPS, it'd be a game changer.
A majority of Americans expect a vaccine to be available within two months and 65% of
those polled are eager to take the vaccine, even if it's experimental.
In reality, we are only at the beginning of this global crisis.
No one knows how it's going to play out, but interestingly, they've predicted how they
expect it to play out, and we are seeing that come to fruition.
In addition to global public health crisis, CAPS is creating havoc with the trade and
travel industries.
Patients are overwhelming healthcare facilities around the world, including many of the makeshift
triage and temporary care facilities.
People are avoiding public spaces out of fear of infection and in compliance with public
health recommendations.
This has had a dramatic effect on the retail and service sectors.
Businesses of all kinds are struggling to operate, let alone provide basic services
as their workers have fallen sick or refuse to come to work.
Some companies have allowed telecommuting, but for most businesses and employees, this
is not an option.
Public health agencies have issued travel advisories, while some countries have banned
travel from the worst affected areas.
As a result, the travel sector is taking a huge hit.
Travel bookings are down 45% and many flights have been canceled.
A ripple effect is raising through the service sector.
Governments that rely on travel and tourism as a large part of their economies are being
hit particularly hard.
Summer confidence has fallen dramatically and people are delaying or canceling discretionary
purchases.
As a result, manufacturers are scaling back production on many goods.
On the other hand, staples like food and medicine are being hoarded.
Mandated border closures and trade restrictions are creating severe localized shortages.
The purchasing managers index suffered its sharpest decline in 50 years, a leading indicator
that markets are preparing for a prolonged period of economic disruption.
In some regions, politicians are adding to the noise and confusion through social media.
Ban all goods and travel from infected countries.
And boycott companies that spread disease are common Twitter refrains often led by public
figures.
It's safe to say we face a tough dilemma.
The movement of people may facilitate the spread of gaps, but interruptions to travel
and trade may have economic consequences that are just as bad.
The outcome of the caps pandemic in event 201 was catastrophic.
65 million people died in the first 18 months.
The outbreak was small at first and initially seemed controllable, but then it started spreading
in densely crowded and impoverished neighborhoods of mega cities.
From that point on, the spread of the disease was explosive.
Within six months, cases were occurring in nearly every country.
At first, wealthy countries with advanced health care and public health systems were
primarily able to limit the spread of the disease within their borders.
As systems became overwhelmed, however, no countries were able to control its spread.
And the disease affected people of all socioeconomic status, from the very poor to the extremely
rich, from sanitation workers to CEOs and national leaders.
The economic consequences were dramatic.
The high death toll and even greater numbers of sick hurt productivity in many industries.
Manufacturers were having trouble filling orders, and countless companies in the service
sector simply shut down.
The global economy was in a free fall, the GDP down 11 percent.
Stock markets around the world plummeted between 20 and 40 percent and headed into a downward
cycle of fear and low expectation.
Businesses were not borrowing, banks were not lending, everyone was just hoping to hunker
down and weather the storm.
While nearly all businesses were affected, certain sectors were especially hard hit.
Travel, finance, service, manufacturing, health care and insurance among them, with some major
companies going bankrupt.
And there were seismic societal consequences as well.
The world saw large scale protests and in some places, riots.
People were angry about the lack of access to health care and medicine, as well as government's
inability to protect them from the disease.
This led to violent crackdowns in some countries and even martial law.
Political upheaval became the rule across the globe.
The public lost trust in their respective administrations.
Several governments fell, while others were desperately striving to hold onto power.
This spurred further crackdowns.
Attempt to control media messaging, originally aimed only at health-related misinformation,
became used increasingly to quash political dissent.
Economists say the economic turmoil caused by such a pandemic will last for years, perhaps
a decade.
The societal impacts, the loss of faith in government, the distrust of news and the breakdown
of social cohesion could last even longer.
So are we, as a global community, now finally ready to do the hard work needed to prepare
for the next pandemic.