WASHINGTON — A "wargame" exercise by D.C.'s Center for Strategic & International Studies (CSIS) predicted a Coronavirus pandemic in October with results similar to what has happened globally these last weeks.
"In some ways, we thought through exactly the kind of situation we find ourselves in right now: very rapid transmission and 3.15% mortality rate," CSIS senior fellow Sam Brannen said. "We supposed that governments would need to take extraordinary measures to prop up economies, that you would have market panic even before the effects of the disease."
Brannen continued that the exercise revealed weaknesses in the international system.
"What we found was that really didn’t do a lot to bring economic confidence back," Brannen said. "This is an issue of people feeling safe again. The World Health Organization has the primary responsibility for coordinating this response. But it’s a relatively weak organization. A striking example is even within the European Union, there’s not cooperation between countries. When Italy asked for help from the European Union, it didn’t get any. We’ve actually seen trucks of masks getting stopped between Germany and Switzerland."
Medical and policy experts at both CSIS and Johns Hopkins exercises predicted the following for our near future:
"Two weeks from now, the medical situation we see in Italy -- where the medical services literally overwhelm -- are where cities in the United States will be, including, potentially, D.C. We have to prepare for that. That doesn’t mean horde food. It doesn’t mean stockpile medical supplies. What it means is listen to messaging about social distancing now, about washing your hands and if you’re sick, stay at home."
Brannen closed with, "Scenarios like this where you write about a future you hope to not to have to enter can be very constructive ways to sort of walk back, almost like the 'Ghost of Christmas Future' in 'The Christmas Carol' of Charles Dickens. So you say I don’t want to wake up in that morning, I want to avoid it. What are the choices I make now to avoid it."
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