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Comment by tbergeron | Hacker News Reader

Seems he was ready after all. Look up Event201 and ID2020.

I found this:

http://www.centerforhealthsecurity.org/event201/

It appears they updated that page to explicitly state that the tabletop exercise was not meant to be a prediction, but simply to highlight challenges in responding in a pandemic.

Well, yes, but the general prediction is trivial. There's going to be another bad virus after this one, too!

Here’s an exercise:

There’s an epidemic in the China with a population of 1.3 billion, the second largest economy. They lock down Wuhan on Jan 23rd to try and contain it from spreading to the rest of China.

On Jan 30th with 7818 infected, the WHO declares Global Health Emergency. It’s a now threat beyond China.

What do you do?

Things to consider:

- There are 100,000 global flights a day.

- China is rushing to build 2 hospitals in 10 days

- It appears to be highly contagious

USA banned flights from/to China. Italy banned flights from/to China. (both decisions caused an outcry about "racism" at the time, btw) Other countries kept the flights going. USA and Italy are now the countries hit hardest despite these restrictions, because the economy is global.

Either all countries must react properly, or a single country's actions won't do anything. Good luck with that.

The horse left the barn and you closed the doors.

China had already locked the doors within their country to try and contain it. Anyone who isn’t a Chinese National can fly in and out of China for the United States.

We didn’t ban flights, we banned Chinese citizens.

Are you sure, you aren’t lulling yourself into a false sense of security?

Interestingly, the more severe response of "check or cancel all flights to China" would not have worked, because by January 21th, the virus started community transmission in Germany and Italy.

But stocking up the mask and respirator and PPE reserve immediately would not have gone amiss, nor would fever checks at airports, public buildings etc.

I feel like the problem with stocking up on material is that it would have to be done before the outbreak even began in China. By mid january, China was vacuuming the market completely for equipment and from there on it has only gotten worse for any country that didnt have domestic production, as countries who did started banning exports.

There was also community spread in the United States on Jan 21st. Patient Zero arrived before any lockdown.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2020-03-09/how-coron...

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