August 20, 2022
World Economic Forum-linked group also predicted number of monkeypox cases almost to the day.
QUICK FACTS:
- In March 2021, a full 14 months before the global monkeypox outbreak, a Washington, D.C.-based think tank called The Nuclear Threat Initiative (NTI) conducted an “exercise scenario” that predicted “a deadly, global pandemic involving an unusual strain of monkeypox virus,” according to a paper published by the group, describing the scenario.
- “In March 2021, the Nuclear Threat Initiative (NTI) partnered with the Munich Security Conference (MSC) to conduct a tabletop exercise on reducing high-consequence biological threats,” the paper reads. “Conducted virtually, the exercise examined gaps in national and international biosecurity and pandemic preparedness architectures and explored opportunities to improve capabilities to prevent and respond to high-consequence biological events.”
- The paper then explained the scenario would involve an “unusual” monkeypox outbreak, just like the one that would occur in reality a little more than a year later: “The exercise scenario portrayed a deadly, global pandemic involving an unusual strain of monkeypox virus that emerged in the fictional nation of Brinia and spread globally over 18 months,” it says.
- The paper even contains a timeline of events, including when the monkeypox outbreak would occur, how many people would die, and when they would die.
- Astoundingly, the paper predicted the outbreak would occur on May 15, 2022, just seven days after the first, real monkeypox infection in the U.K. (May 8) and three days before the first infection in the U.S. (May 18).
- The last monkeypox outbreak occurred back in 2003, when 47 people in the U.S. were infected with the virus traced to a shipment of animals from Ghana. There was a smaller outbreak in Britain in 2018, according to CNN.
- The NTI paper went on to predict that the outbreak would be caused by a “terrorist attack” leading to billions of infections and hundreds of millions of deaths by December 1, 2023: “Ultimately, the exercise scenario revealed that the initial outbreak was caused by a terrorist attack using a pathogen engineered in a laboratory with inadequate biosafety and biosecurity provisions and weak oversight. By the end of the exercise, the fictional pandemic resulted in more than three billion cases and 270 million fatalities worldwide.”
- Again astonishingly, NTI also predicted the number of worldwide monkeypox infections to the week, forecasting that by June 5, 2022 there would be 1,421 cases. By June 14—just nine days after NTI’s prediction—POLITICO reported more than 1,600 confirmed cases across at least 39 countries.
- Looking forward from today, the NTI paper says that by January 10, 2023, there will be 70 million monkeypox cases and 27 million deaths and that by December 1, 2023, there will be 3.2 billion cases and 271 million deaths.
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