Did Health Experts ‘Predict’ New Coronavirus Could Kill 65 Million People?







Some details from a mock health exercise were confused with real-world reports.







































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['Health experts predicted the new coronavirus could kill 65 million people.', 'Amid growing public anxiety about an outbreak of a new coronavirus originating in China in late January 2020, various media outlets reported on a dire warning that suggested the virus could kill 65 million people annually.', 'The Daily Mail, for example, reported that health experts had “predicted” the virus could kill 65 million people in a year. The publication later issued a correction and updated its article.', 'Such stories were prompted by a mock pandemic health exercise run by Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security on Oct. 18, 2019. But that exercise did not “predict” the current virus would kill 65 million people.', 'Johns Hopkins released a statement countering the viral news stories (emphasis added):', 'In October 2019, the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security hosted a pandemic tabletop exercise called Event 201 with partners, the World Economic Forum and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. Recently, the Center for Health Security has received questions about whether that pandemic exercise predicted the current novel coronavirus outbreak in China. To be clear, the Center for Health Security and partners did not make a prediction during our tabletop exercise. For the scenario, we modeled a fictional coronavirus pandemic, but we explicitly stated that it was not a prediction. Instead, the exercise served to highlight preparedness and response challenges that would likely arise in a very severe pandemic. We are not now predicting that the nCoV-2019 outbreak will kill 65 million people. Although our tabletop exercise included a mock novel coronavirus, the inputs we used for modeling the potential impact of that fictional virus are not similar to nCoV-2019.', 'According to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control, coronaviruses are “a large family of viruses that are common in many different species of animals, including camels, cattle, cats, and bats. Rarely, animal coronaviruses can infect people and then spread between people such as with MERS and SARS.”', 'The coronavirus that was first reported in Wuhan, Hubei Province, in China, is a respiratory illness dubbed 2019-nCoV that had killed 213 people in China as of this writing. On Jan. 30, 2020, the World Health Organization declared it a global emergency. Chinese authorities have quarantined 50 million people in an unprecedented effort to contain the virus.', 'Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security.\xa0“Statement About nCoV and Our Pandemic Exercise.”\n\xa0 \xa0 24 January 2020.', 'Karlamangla, Soumya.\xa0“Coronavirus: China has Quarantined 50 Million People. Experts Worry That Might Backfire.”\n\xa0 \xa0Los Angeles Times.\xa028 January 2020.', 'BBC.\xa0“Coronavirus Declared Global Health Emergency by WHO.”\n\xa0 \xa0 30 January 2020.', 'Boyd, Connor.\xa0“US Health Experts Hosted Fictional Coronavirus Pandemic ‘Tabletop Exercise’ Simulation to See How Authorities Would React – Three Months BEFORE the Outbreak in China.”\n\xa0 \xa0 24 January 2020.', 'Rumors about antifa plotting violence have coincided with the month of July and Gettysburg before.', 'A complete story is rarely told in a headline.', 'Social media rumors that two memorials in New York were vandalized proved misleading.', 'In August 2019, a 23-year-old unarmed Black man died after an encounter with police officers in Aurora, Colorado.', 'A chaotic scene in St. Louis sparked outrage, memes, and confusion.', 'Socialite Ghislaine Maxwell was arrested on sex abuse charges connected to convicted pedophile Jeffrey Epstein.', 'The white supremacist group made frequent use of the slogan more recently embraced by President Donald Trump, though they did not, as some claim, invent it.', "The question of past arrests often surfaces among people who want to rationalize police officers' actions when Black men are killed in custody.", 'You can claim anything if you remove the barrier of evidence.', 'Rumors about antifa plotting violence have coincided with the month of July and Gettysburg before.', '© 1995 - 2020 by Snopes Media Group Inc.', 'This material may not be reproduced without permission.', 'Snopes and the Snopes.com logo are registered service marks of Snopes.com']
Did Health Experts 'Predict' New Coronavirus Could Kill 65 Million People?