fact finder
Simulations of the course of pandemics, including monkeypox, have been carried out for years. Conspiracy ideologues suspect targeted plans behind it. This is about preparing for an emergency, but how effective is this?
An unusual strain of monkeypox emerges and within 18 months develops into a deadly global pandemic. The outbreak is being caused by a bioweapons attack using a genetically engineered monkeypox virus developed in a lab with poor biosecurity regulations and weak oversight. The result: three billion cases of illness and 270 million fatalities worldwide.
This fictional pandemic scenario was run through in March 2021 in collaboration with the Munich Security Conference and the Nuclear Threat Initiative (NTI) to analyze the risk of biological threats. The exercise, which has been in preparation since late summer 2020, was intended to highlight critical gaps in biotechnology oversight that could lead to accidental or deliberate misuse with potentially catastrophic global consequences.
Learning from the Corona Pandemic
The choice of monkeypox turned out to be apt, because since mid-May cases of monkeypox have been detected in Great Britain, Belgium, the USA and also Germany. But contrary to what many conspiracy ideologues suspect, behind this election there is no plan by the elites to conjure up a pandemic in order to decimate the population – there are scientific reasons, according to the NTI and the Munich Security Conference at the request of tagesschau.de.
“For the exercise design, we wanted to select a pathogen that plausibly fits into our fictitious scenario,” explains Jaime Yassif, Vice President of the NTI. From a number of options, monkeypox was found to be the most suitable – also to show that there are also dangers from pathogens other than SARS.
“The point was to check whether we have learned something from the Covid pandemic or whether the existing or created processes also do justice to a slightly different type of pathogen and course of the pandemic,” adds Benedikt Franke, Deputy Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of the Munich Security Conference.
“The fact that monkeypox is currently breaking out in several countries is purely coincidental,” says Yassif. The most important finding from our exercise is not the specific pathogen in the fictional scenario, “but the fact that the world is woefully unprepared for protection against future pandemics and we urgently need to take measures to eliminate this vulnerability”.
Simulations nothing unusual
Such “tabletop exercises” take place regularly on different topics and are nothing unusual both in Germany and internationally. The aim is “to sensitize political decision-makers and experts to each other’s decision-making constraints and to substantiate important debates on the basis of actual problems, practical processes and existing situations,” says Franke tagesschau.de-Inquiry.
The security expert Björn Hawlitschka from the Information Office for Economic Security (IBWS) explains the advantages of scenario exercises, business games and crisis management framework exercises: They would have a high learning effect for those involved. “They are action-oriented, encourage participation and are therefore remembered for longer. They are therefore considered the supreme didactic discipline.” Those who are deployed in emergencies could practice preventively and get in tune with each other. “On the other hand, it is helpful to deal preventively with scenarios that must be assumed to be likely to occur,” says Hawlitschka.
In October 2019, two months before the actual outbreak of the corona pandemic, a simulation using the example of corona viruses was carried out in the USA. The federal government also dealt with the dangers of a pandemic caused by the SARS virus, among other things, in a risk analysis led by the RKI in 2013.
Findings on how to deal with the pandemic, such as hygiene measures such as washing hands or problems that arise due to a lack of medical equipment, were predicted in simulations relating to the corona pandemic. However, the findings from the simulations could not prevent the spread of the SARS-CoV-2 virus to a global pandemic. There was also little influence on the leadership in China, where the pandemic began.
vulnerabilities of exercise scenarios
However, scenarios and simulations could “never reach the complexity of reality,” explains Hawlitschka. Rarely does “the one scenario that was planned for the future actually occur, but rather a mixture of different variants. It is therefore necessary to deal with a wide range of scenarios,” writes Hawlitschka tagesschau.de-Inquiry.
In Germany, too few exercise scenarios were played out, so the countermeasures were mainly based on the risk analysis from 2013 and a cross-state and departmental crisis management exercise (LÜKEX) in 2007. According to the security expert, there was not enough practice experience at the beginning of the pandemic. “That may also be one aspect of why a lot had to be improvised at the beginning and then sometimes went wrong.”
Benedikt Franke from the Munich Security Conference criticized that the “many indications of the lack of pandemic preparedness were not taken seriously enough”. He speaks of a “Grey Rhino” – in expert jargon, “Gray Rhinos” stand for a very probable but neglected threat. “Black swans”, on the other hand, are momentous events that are hardly predictable and therefore come as a complete surprise. With regard to dealing with the corona pandemic, Franke says: “Unlike ‘black swans’, these are problems that are NOT unexpected, but are still massively underestimated.”
G7 ministers played leopard pox-Scenario through
In principle, Hawlitschka considers the cross-national crisis management exercise LÜKEX to be “a very good and established format”. Every two years, the crisis management teams of the federal states could practice public safety scenarios. However, the clock rate could be higher, according to Hawlitschka. “But then the Federal Office for Civil Protection and Disaster Assistance would also have to receive the additional resources required if this is politically desired.”
There is potential for improvement in cross-departmental scenario exercises and simulation games at the federal level. “The action plan for civil crisis prevention developed the format of a ‘national business game’ as an idea. But the paper is now more than ten years old. Nothing has happened,” criticizes Hawlitschka.
The political level must also be more involved in exercises. “Here, our neighbors in Switzerland and Austria are further ahead of us. However, the meeting of the G7 health ministers last week, who discussed a leopardpox scenario together, gives hope for improvement.”