What is Crimson Contagion?Crimson Contagion was a joint exercise conducted from January to August 2019, in which numerous national, state and local, private and public organizations in the US participated. The purpose being to test the capacity of the federal government and twelve states to respond to a severe pandemic of influenza originating in China. The simulation, which was conducted months prior to the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, involves a scenario in which tourists returning from China spread a respiratory virus in the United States, beginning in Chicago. In less than two months the virus had infected 110 million Americans, killing more than half a million.
What is Coronavirus?Coronaviruses are a group of viruses that cause diseases in mammals and birds. In humans, coronaviruses cause respiratory tract infections that are typically mild, such as the common cold, though rarer forms such as SARS, MERS, and COVID-19 can be lethal. Symptoms vary in other species: in chickens, they cause an upper respiratory tract disease, while in cows and pigs they cause diarrhea. There are yet to be vaccines or antiviral drugs to prevent or treat human coronavirus infections.
Who are Event 201?Event 201 was hosted by The Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security in partnership with the World Economic Forum and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. This was a high-level pandemic tabletop exercise on October 18, 2019, in New York, NY. The exercise illustrated areas where public/private partnerships will be necessary during the response to a severe coronavirus pandemic in order to diminish large-scale economic and societal consequences. The exercise took place a few months before the World Health Organization announced the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, and the statement from Johns Hopkins specifically states that the exercise was not predictive of the current pandemic. In fact they say that "the inputs we used for modeling the potential impact of that fictional virus are not similar to nCoV-2019".