Business game for emergencies: monkeypox outbreak was simulated in 2021 - test is now causing excitement
Created: 05/24/2022Updated: 05/24/2022 15:49
By: Anna Lorenz
This electron micrograph provided by the Robert Koch Institute (RKI) shows the monkeypox virus.
© Andrea Männel / dpa
Because of the worldwide occurrence of monkeypox, lateral thinkers are already trying to suspect a conspiracy behind the infections.
The occasion is a simulation – but coincidence remains coincidence.
Munich – In addition to all the problems that Corona brought with it, the pandemic has shown that conspiracy theories about viruses do not seem to lack an audience.
While monkeypox has not yet made any major waves, in the wake of Covid-19 thousands of people demonstrated against what they believed to be harsh measures to contain the virus.
It is not known how many infections resulted from this - but on the scales of lateral thinkers this is of course not significant, because some simply denied the existence of the virus, while others saw infection as a necessary evil in order to regain their supposedly lost freedom.
Simulated Monkeypox - Coincidence is coincidence, but now causes trouble
The linchpin of the theories surrounding the current monkeypox cases is the fact that this virus was part of a disaster simulation that was played out in 2021 at the Munich Security Conference.
As part of the thought experiment, it should be examined to what extent the lessons learned from the corona pandemic have improved protection against further health threats.
"It was about checking 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 the course of the pandemic," said the Vice Chairman and CEO of the Munich Security Conference, Benedikt Franke, to the
Tagesschau
.
Monkeypox 2021 simulation: 'World woefully unprepared to protect against future pandemics'
The monkeypox simulation has been in preparation since late summer 2020.
"For the exercise design, we wanted to select a pathogen that plausibly fits into our fictitious scenario," explains Jaime Yassif, Vice President of the non-profit organization "Nuclear Threat Initiative" (NTI), which helped design the thought model.
In the exercise scenario, May 15 was set as the outbreak time of the simulated pandemic on the SiKo from 2021.
However, the proximity of the hypothetical date chosen at the time to the time of the current monkeypox cases means that theories are now circulating on the Internet about a long-planned, conscious initiation of a deadly epidemic.
While conspiracy theorists and mavericks are using the current monkeypox infections for their own purposes, Yassif does not believe in such secrecy.
The coincidence of the time of simulation and the current spread of the virus is not the decisive point as mere coincidence, "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".
(askl)
