Virus Pandemic Exercise Got One Thing Wrong: the U.S. Response
- 2019 drill forecast a coronavirus killing 3% of those infected
- Trump pressed back on notion he didn’t take virus seriously
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Last October, about 50 national security experts gathered in Washington to role-play a global response to a frightening scenario: a pandemic sparked by a mysterious new coronavirus ravages the world, hitting North Asia, Europe and the U.S. especially hard.
The exercise got a lot right about the pandemic now sweeping the globe. It concerned a virus that’s “highly transmissible via direct person-to-person contact,” overwhelms available resources and kills more than 3% of those infected, roughly equivalent to the current rate, with a workable vaccine trial many months away.