Pandemic simulation games – Preparation for a new era?

I'm going to be presenting, below, a transcript of a bit less than half of a presentation by a German journalist--the presentation being under the same title. What the presenter, Paul Schreyer, does is to present the history of various crisis management scenarios simulated and planned for by the US government over quite a long time span. Those scenarios have come to focus in recent decades on pandemic response. It's a very interesting picture that gets presented. Schreyer doesn't argue for any overall perspective, urging instead that his viewers decide for themselves what it all means. 

As you'll see, I've embedded the Youtube of the presentation. There is an English voiceover, as well as English subtitles. The reason I've provided a transcript is because this will provide readier access for anyone wishing to return to any specific point. My transcript begins after Schreyer summarizes earlier simulations, and continues from the financial crisis of 2007. However, to give you an idea of some of the content in the first half (or a bit more) of the presentation, here is one example.

Schreyer points out that the US government decided to conduct a project to see whether "terrorists" could--using "off the shelf" materials--construct an anthrax weapon. The results were successful! Later, he deals with the famous "anthrax letters"--a case that mirabile dictu has still not been solved. He notes that the two senators to whom anthrax letters were directed--Leahy and Daschle--had been opposing proposed measures to grant the Deep State extensive new powers. They changed their minds. Make of that what you will. In that first half you'll also learn about the significance of Zhou's reference to the US facing a "Dark Winter."

Before we get into Schreyer's presentation, I want to point out what appears to be some good news on a related matter--passports. The so-called Covid passports. Today at AmThinker there's an embed of a Naomi Wolf video (15 minutes) that explains how the passport regime would essentially equate to the Chinese regime of "social credit" points. You'll want to keep that in mind while following Schreyer's presentation. However, Karl Denninger maintains today that the passport offensive appears to have failed, and the NYT is also saying pretty much the same thing. Americans are balking.

I'm going to all this trouble because I believe that the perspective afforded by Schreyer ties in well with other social and political developments that we've experienced over the last years. For example, Schreyer explicitly ties these developments into US politics, while leaving you to draw conclusions. Obviously, he can't cover everything, but I'm guessing that readers here will be "triggered" by what he has to say. The close cooperation between governments, their intelligence and LE agencies, NGOs, private foundations, and the communication and tech media companies is a feature that will surely draw your interest.

So first I'll embed the video, followed by the intro and a table of contents, that may prove useful. That will be followed by the transcript, which covers 25 minutes of talking.

Political decisions during the Corona crisis did not come out of the blue. The "war on viruses" began back in the 1990s as the "war on bioterror." Research shows: For more than twenty years since then, pandemic scenarios have been repeatedly rehearsed in simulation exercises, first in the U.S., later coordinated internationally. The titles of these exercises are reminiscent of Hollywood productions: "Dark Winter" (2001), "Global Mercury" (2003), "Atlantic Storm" (2005) or "Clade X" (2018). High-ranking government representatives as well as well-known journalists were involved, most recently, at "Event 201" in October 2019, also board members of large global corporations. After the World Health Organization (WHO) declared a coronavirus pandemic in 2020, many of the measures that had been rehearsed and discussed for years were implemented globally. 

Passages like the following appeared in scripts as early as 20 years ago: "The sight of an armed military presence in US cities has provoked protests about curtailment of civil liberties (...) The question is, however, how do we enforce it and to what degree? How much force do you use to keep people in their homes?" In the event of a pandemic, "basic civil liberties such as freedom of assembly or travel" could no longer be „taken for granted". Restrictions on liberty, as well as mass vaccinations, were regular features of the planning games. 

This lecture will chronologically trace how these exercises came about, who organized them, and what parallels the scripts have to the current situation. Is the virus just a pretext for a longer-planned global transformation? And was a severe stock market quake in September 2019 perhaps the real trigger for the global lockdown?

Table of contents:

0:00:00​ Pandemic exercises - Preparation for a new era?

0:02:23​ Era of the Cold War 1945 - 1990

0:05:05​ The USA without an enemy

0:17:05​ Bioterror exercises 1990 - 2005

0:23:51​ The Exercise “Dark Winter”

0:30:44​ Emergency plans for bioterror and flu pandemics

0:35:40​ Interim conclusion

0:38:40​ “Lock Step-Scenario” 2010

0:44:38​ “MARS” and the G20 Health Minister meeting in Berlin

0:50:35​ Why the Corona Pandemic started in 2020

0:58:19​ “Event 201“ - Training with a Corona pandemic

Transcript:

Paul Schreyer: Pandemic simulation games – Preparation for a new era?

Hello! My name is Paul Schreyer. I'm a freelance journalist, author, and co-editor of the magazine Multipolar.

...

35:41 Interim Conclusion

OK. I have presented to you quite a few of these simulation exercises and by now you probably recognize common patterns. So let me at this point draw a brief interim conclusion.

The basic premise of every one of these scenarios was a public health emergency with ensuing questions about the decision-making process and competences. But they also involved declaring a state of emergency, implementing authoritarian leadership, bypassing [Congress] and investing certain federal officials with augmented decision-making power while also suspending fundamental civil rights and effectuating plans to vaccinate the population.

What strikes me as particularly noteworthy is the ready suspension of basic human rights when responding to a pandemic or a bioterror attack, because that is not necessarily a logical consequence. Observing all of this, the question arises that maybe such exercises might have served as a cover and testing ground for a state of emergency and checking out how such a political situation could be handled. This, at least, is my personal impression.

Well then, soon the financial crisis of 2007 and 2008 happened and the topic of pandemic exercises was pushed a little to the background on the international stage. Then in the spring of 2009, when its impact had a devastating effect on the world economy, another pandemic came around the corner--to put it casually.

So, when the H1N1 flu, also called Swine flue, emerged and nobody quite knew what would come of it, this gentleman here said something very interesting. He is probably not known to everybody but in France he is prominent. His name is Jacques Attali, who for many decades has had the function of special adviser in French politics counseling several presidents, most of all Francois Mitterand, for whom he had also worked as a so-called 'sherpa', preparing G8 summits. So Attali has moved in the circles of French power elites for a very long time and has exerted substantial influence as an avant garde thought leader. He helped Emmanuel Macron rise to power and has said of himself that he "discovered" [Macron]. This is a relatively credible claim because Attali is a visionary networker and has extensive connections.

So, as I said, he wrote something most interesting when the 2009 H1N1 flu came about:

"History teaches us that humanity advances in great strides if it is frightened. The pandemic now setting in might trigger one of these fears that cause structural changes. Then we will be able to lay the foundation for a world government--something that could be accomplished much faster than would have been possible by economic reasons alone."

I won't offer a comment--those are simply Attali's own words from the 2009 H1N1 flu. Actually, what I find striking is the fact that such ideas are usually associated with conspiracy theories, but this is a true quote. It is the statement of a man who has great influence around the world.

A year later, in 2010, a study was published in the USA that goes along the same lines. It is the so-called "Lock Step" scenario. Let me briefly introduce it to you.

The title of the study is "Scenarios for the Future of Technology and International Development." That sounds a little boring and bureaucratic--quite unspectacular at first glance. You wouldn't expect the study to contain newsworthy information. It was financed with money from the Rockefeller Foundation ... That foundation is one of the oldest, wealthiest, and most powerful foundations in the world. ... Even today the Rockefeller Foundation is influential in many fields. This 2010 study has apparently taken scenario planning to an entirely new level. A set of four different future global scenarios were envisioned in order to explore how societies might develop over the next 15 to 20 years. 

In each of the four narratives the imagined societies are shaped by certain driving forces playing out over time like, for example, the impact of new technologies and natural catastrophes like deadly diseases. The project designers were required to think outside the box and envision plausible futures. One of these possible scenarios was called "Lock Step", which describes the following: 

A deadly flu pandemic is spreading globally and leads to panic. China, with its restrictive approach, is seen as the paragon of effective crisis management and is widely emulated. Mask wearing becomes mandatory everywhere. Authoritarian control of citizens is imposed and remains in place even after the pandemic is over. Citzens willingly give up their sovereignty and liberties. It is only after around ten years of top-down rule that people begin to rebel.

It's very odd to read this now, in 2020--recognizing in that depiction our present reality. You come to realize that the study's underlying objective is to "seed a new strategic conversation among the key public, private, and philanthropic  stakeholders" so as to "achieve a more effective impact" for a "preferred future." Financed by a very powerful foundation, I imagine that quite a few key players have read the study, even though I'm not able to say how it was received and who read it. ... 

From 2017 on the topic of emergency response and pandemic simulation exercises gained traction when a new US president moved into the White House: Donald Trump. I suggest a causal relationship between the change of government and the invigoration of the simulation exercises. Here is a picture of the outgoing president, Barack Obama, in conversation with president-elect Donald Trump in the Oval Office in November, 2016.

In this context and what follows many will recall Fauci's statement that "the next president", i.e., Trump, would "no doubt" face a surprise infectious disease outbreak. Coincidence or not?

 

You all remember the days after the elections--It was truly a shock, affecting the media all over the world. Trump is the new president! How could that happen! Nobody had deemed it possible that an outsider like Trump--somebody who had been expressing himself in such a bold and blunt manner, not caring about how his words would be received by the media--could actually win the election. The news of that man becoming president sent shock waves around the globe. You are surely familiar with the World Economic Forum's annual meeting  every January in Davos, and the Munich Security Conference every February. 

In 2017 at those events the attendees spoke of little else but the new president of the USA. What would Trump as president mean for world trade, for the financial system, and for diplomacy? Can we keep going like we did in the past? So, in February, 2017, in his opening remarks in Munich, John McCain said, "I refuse to accept that the demise of our world order". He was a hardliner and hawk with great influence in the US and in international diplomatic circles, and his address was met with a lot of applause at the conference, where high ranking representatives of the military, politics, and business--mainly from NATO member countries--get together every year. When you look at the documents and articles from that year you come to realize that trans-Atlantic relations were severely challenged at that time. The members of these elite circles were worried big time about the future of the Western military alliance and wondered whether it all might fall apart. So, in that context, McCain stated: "I refuse to accept the demise of out world order," followed by loud applause from his peers in Western countries.

The next day at the same conference Bill Gates appeared and gave a talk as well, warning that "we ignore the link between health and international security at our own peril." And he adds that it is only a question of time until a dangerous pathogen spreads, be it "by a quirk of nature or at the hands of a terrorist." We need to be prepared with a new "arsenal of weapons". The world needs to "prepare for epidemics the way the military prepares for war." 

Immediately afterwards the pandemic exercises start anew. In May, 2017, for the first time in history the health ministers of the G20 met in Berlin. ... China, India, and Brazil participated as well. For the first time those health ministers came together as a team to organize their response to the threat of a future pandemic. ... They all sit there watching a pandemic scenario on the screen. The name of the new, dangerous virus was not SARS but MARS--Mountain Associated Respiratory Syndrome. ... [viewing this] we might comprehend better why most of the countries are proceeding in a very coordinated way and why in every country more or less the same is acted out. ... They were given the same general recipes and procedural instructions. ...

[Schreyer returns to his timeline. Later in 2017 another conference is hosted by the Germans, who have been assigned to coordinate strategies. Schreyer points out that, along with high level government and NGO officials (WHO), we find officials from immensely powerful foundations.] In my view, however, these two gentlemen at the sides are most important, for they play in a different league altogether. Here to the left is Jeremy Farrar of the Wellcome Trust. That's a British foundation with a remarkable 25 billion dollar endowment. It is an extremely influential charitable foundation in the field of health governance. It is even more powerful, in terms of funding, than the Rockefeller Foundation or the George Soros Open Society Foundation. So the Wellcome Trust has more funds and has built a huge network for global health governance.

To the right is Christopher Elias of the Gates Foundation. This is in fact an even more important foundation in this field. With roughly 50 billion dollars that foundation is even better connected. The Gates Foundation plays a leading role in global health governance, one can surely say without exaggeration.

So, from 2017 these two weighty gentlemen have been counseling the German government ... 

Let's move on to the year 2018.

Again there is a major bioterrorism simulation exercise in the USA, this time however without international scope. You see very high level officials and politicians representing the US National Security Council in Washington. They are all people in high positions who [role play] members of the National Security Council who are now coping with an emergency situation. It's interesting from different angles. [Schreyer points first to two well known female TV hosts on the screen, participating in the simulation.]

The plot of the exercise was as follows. A fictional elitist cult had financed the creation of a nasty virus in a biolab in Zurich. It was eventually let loose so that a global pandemic has arisen. The aim of that cult had been to reduce the global population, indeed a demonic ambition. So that was the scenario of this exercise, which was called Clade X. It was once more organized by the John Hopkins Center for Health Security. Here our old acquaintance Tom Daschle to the right. I have mentioned him before as one of the addressees of the anthrax letters, who in the meantime has been employed as a lobbyist for the health care industry, here now participating in this exercise. To his left is biosecurity expert Tara O'Toole, who has written a number of scripts for such simulation exercises--among them, the Dark Winter scenario. Later she played an important role in government. In fact, she's one of the key figures in the field of disaster response strategies.

Now we are fast approaching the present time. But before I tell you about the latest simulation exercise--Event 201 in October, 2019--allow me at this point to pose the question of why the Corona pandemic did happen in January, 2020? You could, of course, say that it happened because the virus just came up then. Sticking with the official explanation, it originated in Wuhan, China, and spread from one person to the next from one country to another naturally. However, if you assume that the Corona pandemic did not occur so fatefully but was masterminded by some circles, it might not be uninteresting to get straight what happened in September, 2019.

[Schreyer now provides a summary of the liquidity crisis of September, 2019--the Cash Crunch or Repo Crisis. The Fed had to try to prevent a collapse of the financial system. It all happened without the public noticing. He points out that before the crisis of 2007 Fed assets were about 1 trillion dollars but they doubled within a few weeks. However, things didn't return to normal--Fed bond purchases continued in 2010 and 2011 and even increased in 2012-2014. The interventions plateaued to the level of 4 trillion dollars. This unsustainable bubble was gigantic. The Fed tried deflating the bubble at the end of 2017. However, in September, 2019 "something happened", an unknown something, and the Fed had to suddenly reverse course and start buying again. However, the cash injections totally take off in March, 2020, "in the shadow of corona."]

And now I'd like to show you a report from January 16, 2020, a few weeks before Corona became the major media topic. [A German report discusses the increase in Fed purchases, finding it unconvincing. The names of companies receiving Fed loans are kept secret. Did a collapse threaten? Schreyer maintains that the financial interventions, on a 100 year time scale, appear to match the interventions during the Great Depression. Having reviewed these financial developments, Schreyer returns to the October, 2019 simulation exercise in New York--Event 201.]

In October 2019 the next simulation exercise took place in that hotel, an exceptionally luxurious venue for such an exercise in Manhattan. ...  Sure enough, it was a coronavirus pandemic that was being responded to. I'd like to present to you briefly who is sitting there at the conference table. This is the host from the John Hopkins Center for Health Security, next to him Christopher Elias of the Gates Foundation. I have brought him to your attention before, ... To his right, the director of the American CDC. There is the director of the Chinese CDC who was also part of that group of global senior leaders. There the Vice President Global Public Health at Johnson  & Johnson, by market value the largest pharma corporation in the world. Here the former deputy director of the CIA and there in the front the global chief operating officer at Edelman, the world's largest public relations and communications firm.

As I've mentioned, this time a coronavirus pandemic was simulated with an eye toward public relations. It says here, 

"Governments will need to partner with traditional and social media companies to research and develop nimble approaches to countering misinformation. This will require developing the ability to flood media with fast, accurate, and consistent information. For their part media corporations should commit to ensuring that authoritative messages are prioritized and that false messages are suppressed, including through the use of technology."

That is basically just what is happening at this very moment.

Here's another picture of that conference. This is Anita Cicero, the Deputy Director of the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security. She was assigned to co-organize the event. She's a lawyer who, before joining the Center, had worked as a pharma lobbyist in the management of a Washington DC law firm responsible for about 300 employees, advocating on behalf of the pharma industry with members of Congress, likewise constructively engaging with members of the European Commission. Finally she became Deputy Director of that Center for Health Security. 

These infographics there I find very interesting. The significant data of the fictional crisis of Event 201 are being presented in charts, maps, and tables, showing the mounting numbers of cases and--there on the map--you see what countries are impacted and to what degree. There we are informed about the performance of financial markets. Here we have a projection of how the death rate will develop within the next months. This is exactly the same kind of infographics that we're now getting from the Johns Hopkins University. It is the information we are now being fed by all mainstream media outlets. It's just the same graphic visualization of numbers that is our reality now. And the present censorship by social media giants like Youtube and Google has been expressly advised by that Event 201 just a few months before today's Corona crisis. What had been planned then is now reality. I suppose all that information taken together provides a crucial backdrop for you to form your own opinion about what is happening at the moment. Thank you for your attention!