Crimson Contagion
Crimson Contagion was an exercise by ASPR , a position in the US Department of Health and Human Services . It was the largest exercise to date for ASPR, which involved 12 states , 96 local government agencies, 12 Indian reservations, 87 hospitals and other private organizations. The exercise took place from August 13 to 16, 2019, but was embedded in a series of exercises in which four exercises took place between January and August 2019.
The scenario envisaged that a new flu virus would emerge in China and be brought to the United States by air travelers. The disease first breaks out in Chicago and later spreads across the country. There would have been 110 million sick people in the USA and around 500,000 dead.
During the exercise it was found that the authorities were unable to cooperate sufficiently. It was unclear which information should be collected, there was no common database of different federal authorities and responsibilities were not regulated. The guidelines were inconsistent or incorrect. It showed that the United States was insufficiently prepared for a pandemic of this magnitude. As a result, the planned disease control budget was increased in the 2021 budget.
In March 2020 it became apparent that this exercise had strong parallels to the then real COVID-19 pandemic in the United States , which broke out in China in December 2019.
Individual evidence
- ↑ HHS 2019 Annual Report. (pdf) p. 29 , accessed on March 25, 2020 (English).
- ↑ a b c d Elmar Theveßen: The 9/11 of the Trump administration. March 21, 2020, accessed March 25, 2020 .
- ↑ a b c d David E. Sanger, Eric Lipton, Eileen Sullivan, Michael Crowley: Before Virus Outbreak, a Cascade of Warnings Went Unheeded. Government exercises, including one last year, made clear that the US was not ready for a pandemic like the coronavirus. But little was done. March 19, 2020, accessed on March 25, 2020 .