The SPARS Pandemic 2025-2028 Experts Predicted A Coronavirus Pandemic Years Ago. Now It’s Playing Out Before Our Eyes

In 2017, a team of experts at the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security published a scenario as part of a training exercise that they believed could happen in the not-so-distant future.

The SPARS Pandemic Scenario

The year is 2025.

A few American travelers returning from Asia die of an unknown, influenza-like illness. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention confirms the victims were infected with a novel coronavirus, SPARS-CoV.

Nothing is known about this novel coronavirus. There is no rapid diagnostic test. There are no known treatments. And there is no vaccine.

It’s not long before the SPARS outbreak erupts into a global pandemic.

The CDC finds SPARS is transmitted through respiratory droplets and recommends that everyone practice hand hygiene and frequently disinfect surfaces. Experts learn that SPARS has a long incubation period– 7 to 10 days– and that it can be spread by asymptomatic carriers. 

Pregnant women and those with underlying conditions like asthma and emphysema are at a higher risk for complications and death. The WHO begins to recommend social distancing and isolation of suspected cases.

There is hope that an existing antiviral drug could help treat SPARS, but there have been no randomized controlled trials. The US Food and Drug Administration issues an Emergency Use Authorization for this drug to treat SPARS patients. Soon, there is high public demand for the drug and millions of doses are dispensed from the Strategic National Stockpile. However, it soon becomes apparent that the drug can cause serious side effects.

Things become political. Republicans voice their support of the drug while Democrats express doubt. America is more connected yet more divided than ever. Rumors and misinformation regarding the virus and potential treatments circulate on social media. The economy takes a hit as the pandemic drags on. Within a year, a potential vaccine begins expedited review and there are promises that tens of millions of doses will be available within a few months. But of the hundreds of millions of people living in the US, who will get the vaccine first?

Communication in the time of Covid-19

Reading the SPARS Pandemic Scenario is like reading an account of the Covid-19 pandemic. But the scenario wasn’t an attempt to predict the future. Rather, it was meant to illustrate a broad range of serious challenges that public health communicators might face. The hope was that by working through these challenges as part of a training exercise, federal, state and local agencies would be well prepared to respond to a similar scenario in the future.

That future is now. But many of the public health pitfalls meant to serve as teaching tools seem to have played out before our eyes.

During this pandemic, the Trump administration has at times undermined its own effort at clear and transparent communication by issuing contradictory public health recommendations and messaging — for example the tug of war over the use of face masks, the hype surrounding hydroxychloroquine and, most recently, unclear guidance about testing people exposed to the coronavirus but showing no symptoms.

And the subsequent confusion has consequences.

Take Butler County Sheriff Richard Jones for example. Jones has decided not to enforce Ohio governor Mike DeWine’s state-wide mask mandate issued July 23 — a decision that could cost lives.

“Every week they change how you can catch this, how you can’t. First to wear a mask, then not to wear a mask. 

Then a certain kind of mask. And how it spreads. It’s on a surface, then it [can] be in the air for 10 days. People are confused. I’m confused,” Jones told CNN’s Brianna Keilar in late July.

When emerging medical insights into this pandemic aren’t communicated clearly, community leaders like Jones ignore life-saving recommendations.

In fact, a poll from June found that only about half of Americans were wearing a mask every time they left their homes despite a growing body of medical research that indicates masks can save thousands of lives.

From wearing a mask, to the degree of asymptomatic spread, to the danger of airborne virus particles, the communication of new scientific insights has frequently led to more confusion than clarity.

Dr. Meredith Li-Vollmer, risk communication specialist at Public Health Seattle and King County, says it’s natural for public health recommendations to change over time as scientific understanding grows. But when new information isn’t communicated clearly, it can erode public trust.

“You’re dealing with something that is that unknown and where the information is changing so quickly,” Li-Vollmer told CNN. “All the experts are having to learn as it happens.” They need to say that, she added.

“It was really important to let people know that we’re still learning.”

The need to invest in preparedness

Dr. Monica Schoch-Spana, the SPARS Pandemic Scenario project team lead at the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security, lamented the role of public health communication is often taken for granted. She told CNN that “communications work in public health has typically been seen as ancillary to the ‘real’ work of outbreak containment.”

“Thus, those responsible for public communication and community engagement often struggle to be recognized for the essential role they play in mitigating the adverse effects of a disease outbreak including illness and death, but also stigma, trauma, public distrust, and social fragmentation” she said.

President Trump has frequently indicated that he isn’t aware that preparedness resources exist. He has called the Covid-19 pandemic “something that nobody has ever thought could happen to this country.”

The experts who wrote the SPARS Pandemic Scenario might beg to differ.

 “Good resources for preparedness exist,” Schoch-Spana told CNN. “Undermining the Covid-19 response by the US government was a lack of good crisis leadership at the very top, dismissal of the already existing readiness and response expertise within the key agencies, and the substitution of science and long-term public health outcomes by politics and short-term thinking.”

The Trump Administration has dismissed but also dismantled one of these key agencies — the National Security Council Directorate for Global Health Security and Biodefense. The unit was established after the 2014-2016 Ebola epidemic in West Africa to prepare for the next inevitable disease outbreak and prevent it from becoming an epidemic or pandemic.

Federal deprioritization of public health preparedness and response has made it increasingly difficult for public health communicators to carry out their important work; diminishing federal funding has jeopardized access to key preparedness resources like the SPARS Pandemic Scenario.

In 2008, Li-Vollmer and her team had the funding to participate in a week-long pandemic flu training exercise. They gained crucial practice building field hospitals, setting up media briefings and responding as if a pandemic were really happening.

They also laid the foundation for important relationships with other health departments that they would rely upon when an actual pandemic flu struck just one year later.

“When the H1N1 pandemic happened — it happened a year after we did that week-long exercise — and it really felt like: OK, we know what to do,” said Li-Vollmer. “We felt very well prepared because we’d actually physically gone through the steps of it. But t

Li-Vollmer says her team of emergency experts has been cut by more than half since the H1N1 pandemic, and lack of federal funding has undermined the ability of her county health department to access crucial training resources.

She is grateful she had the opportunity to work through the SPARS Pandemic Scenario just a year before this current pandemic began. Her county health department experienced the first Covid-19 case in the US — and the first Covid-19 death.

Reflecting on what she has learned over the course of this pandemic, Li-Vollmer says the only thing she would have asked for is more federal funding so that her team could have greater access to training exercises like the SPARS Pandemic Scenario.

There are countless lessons to be learned from the real-world Covid-19 pandemic. Among them is the importance of remaining vigilant about public health preparedness even while the threat of a pandemic seems like a distant, hypothetical possibility.

Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, commented during a recent discussion with the TB Alliance on the difficulty of retaining support for a sustained commitment to pandemic preparedness when we’re not currently in the midst of an outbreak.

“Emerging infections will continue to occur long after we’re all gone, Fauci said. “So let’s prepare for them.”

The SPARS Pandemic 2025-2028 (Text)

The SPARS Pandemic 2025-2028 (Pdf)

The New World Order: The Conspiracy Theory And The Power Of The Internet

  “The Illuminati, a mysterious international organisation made up of the world’s top political and social elites, controls the workings of the entire world behind the scenes”. This is the world’s most famous conspiracy theory about the New World Order.

For hundreds of years, legends about the Illuminati have been spread and many people currently believe that the Illuminati still exist. It is believed that the Illuminati operate in various fields such as global politics, military affairs, finance and mass media and control the historical process of the entire world.

The ultimate goal is to establish a New World Order. Nobody can prove it, but many people believe it. This is the greatest paradox about conspiracy theories.

In the 2009 film, Angels and Demons – based on Dan Brown’s best seller of the same name about Professor Langdon, played by Tom Hanks – the story of the Illuminati, who supposedly originated in Europe during the Age of Enlightenment, was recalled. There were physicists, mathematicians and astronomers who questioned the “erroneous teachings” of the authority of the Holy See and dedicated themselves to the scientific field of the search for truth.

Eventually, the Illuminati were forced to become a clandestine organisation and have continued to recruit members for hundreds of years to this day. In Angels and Demons, the historical facts are clearly questionable, and the movie appeared after the great economic crisis of 2007-2008.

The New World Order conspiracy theory has been circulating for a long time and is full of mysterious theories that, however, convince many people who are powerless and dissatisfied with the current state of the world.

The Illuminati, who advocate the establishment of a New World Order through the planning of a series of political and financial events (the financial tsunami of 2007-2008 is said to have been planned by the Illuminati), attempt to influence the course of world history, and ultimately establish an authoritarian world government.

Supporters of the New World Order theory believe that even the powerful US government is now just a puppet government. While another “shadow government” made up of a few people makes decisions that will change the fate of the planet.

You might think that all of the above is just crackpot theories. Many people, however, believe this is true. According to a 2013 poll conducted by the Public Policy Polling Foundation, 28% of US voters believe that the New World Order is actually taking hold.

Brian L. Keeley, a professor of philosophy at Pitts College who devotes himself to the study of modern conspiracy theories, believes that an important feature of conspiracy theorists is that they cite some trivial and overlooked incidents and then propose a perfect explanation compared to an embarrassed official response. The reason why the conspiracy theory explanation can be widely disseminated is that it has no argumentation process to deny. It is just a judgement that jumps directly from hypothesis to conclusion. In the argumentation process, it is only a subjective interpretation of the event.

Nevertheless, for the public that does not fully understand the incident, the conspiracy theory provides an “explanation” for the unknown part of the said incident, and this “explanation” cannot be denied (because its very existence is not corroborated by real arguments and facts). It is therefore recognised as a valid argument by many people.

For example, no one has substantial evidence to prove that the Illuminati actually exist, but no one can prove that the Illuminati are purely fictitious. Therefore, you cannot deny their existence because their existence is “perfection without evidence”.

Columnist Martha Gill wrote in The Guardian on the subject, describing the Illuminati as the most enduring conspiracy theory organisation in world history.

“Conspiracy theories relating to the 1969 moon landing mission, the Kennedy assassination, the 9/11 attacks, etc., are all limited to a specific time and place. But conspiracy theories supporting the existence of the Illuminati can connect them. Anything about these connections, however, is difficult to prove”. In other words, the supporters of conspiracy theories may have common imagination and attribute everything to this organisation, so that every irrational phenomenon in the world can be explained.

Although no one can prove the real existence of the Illuminati, there is actually an alleged “global shadow government” in the world whose name is the Bilderberg Group. The Bilderberg Group holds an annual world-class private meeting and participants include elites from all walks of society such as government, business, media, science and technology.

Known as the “World’s Most Mysterious Conference”, the Bilderberg Group invites various famous political and economic figures to participate in its meetings every year.

Prince Bernhard van Lippe-Biesterfeld (1911-2004) held the first meeting in 1954. As the venue for the meeting was the Bilderberg Hotel in Oosterbeek, that name was used as the name of the group.

The existence of the Bilderberg Group is not a secret, but the content of the topics discussed at the Conferences is absolutely confidential and mainstream media cannot report on the content of the meetings.

The Bilderberg Group issues a press release every year to introduce the Conference participants and the outline of the topics discussed. Over the years, participants have come from many places, including Prince Philip of Edinburgh (1921-2021) of the British Royal Family, Crown Prince Charles, former British Prime Ministers, French President Macron, German Chancellor Merkel, former US Presidents Bush and Clinton, and even Bill Gates and other Internet giants. There were also Italians, as reported years ago in a newspaper of our country.

The 2018 Conference was held in Turin, Italy, in June. According to the description on the Bilderberg Group’s official website, the main topics included European populism, the development of artificial intelligence, quantum computer technology and the “post-truth” era. Obviously the actual content and results of the meeting’s discussion have never been reported.

Therefore, the Bilderberg Group has naturally become a locus where conspiracy theorists want to draw material. They describe the Bilderberg Group as true evidence of the theory that a very small number of elites controls the world, and the participants are planning a New World Order.

On the subject of strange things, let us give some examples. In June 2018, the British Royal Family was also caught up in conspiracy theories. When Prince Harry and his wife Meghan attended a show, they were caught on camera motionless, like two stiff and dull robots. Later related clips went viral on the Internet and netizens were in an uproar: many people believed that the distinguished members of the Royal Family were actually robots developed by high technology.

However, the management of the London museum, Madame Tussauds, later explained the mystery by stating that Harry and Meghan were only played by two actors who wore extremely high-realism wax masks on their faces – all to promote an exhibition of wax statues – and inadvertently caused an uproar.

In that short video, Harry and Meghan did not change their facial appearance and their expressions were stiff just like robots. Consequently, conspiracy theorists used this as evidence that they were robots secretly built by the British Royal Family.

This argument is an extension of the ‘trivial evidence’ mentioned above. The argument proponents ignore any argumentation process and directly draw the final conclusion through the above stated “trivial evidence”. This conclusion is highly topical and quite appealing. With the fast spread of the Internet, the “quick truth” will naturally be recognised and sought after by many people.

I think many people still remember the “Mandela effect” that spread wildly across the Internet in the early years as a false memory. The name “Mandela effect” is believed to have come from Fiona Broome, a self-described “paranormal consultant”, who created a website called the “Mandela effect”. Supporters of the ‘Mandela effect’ claim to “remember” that former South African President Mandela died in prison in the 1980s. But in reality, after being released from prison, Mandela served as President of South Africa from 1994 to 1999 and died in December 2013.

So why should anyone believe this seemingly absurd statement? The Internet has become a support platform for a lot of false content, fake news, as well as unreasonableness and lack of justification. When someone shared that ‘false memory’ with others on the Internet, many people believed it to be true, and even suddenly recalled having that memory: “Mandela died in prison that year”.

As a result, lies inconsistent with facts continue to spread. The lie is repeated thousands of times and many people consider it to be the truth: this learning phase is the first misleading rule on the Internet.

In the Internet era, multidimensional and multiplatform features have generated a number of online “malignancies” of conspiracy theories. Moreover, their dissemination ability is not limited to “believers” only. Since online social media provide a widespread and wide dissemination platform, one passes it onto ten people, ten spread it to a hundred, a hundred to a thousand, and so it goes on in geometric fashion, thus turning a ‘hot’ topic on the Internet into an absolute truth. Those who want to believe are naturally prepared and willing to do so. Moreover, these false opinions on the Internet may even have an impact on the real world.

For example, at the political level, everyone can now comment and participate in the online arena. For politicians to get the right to speak and set the agenda, the key is to rely on the public’s direction on the Internet. The Internet discourse has become the dominant factor of the political storytelling, and not vice versa. The characteristics of social networks are precisely the breeding ground for conspiracy theories.

The Internet is easy to spread among the public and it is exactly the breeding ground for conspiracy theories.

Nowadays, conspiracy theories are enough to influence politics and even political developments. A specific conspiracy theory gains a number of supporters through the Internet that promotes it to become a highly debated topic among the public. Consequently, it enters the real political arena coming from the virtual community and its influence can change the direction of governmental decisions.

Looking at it from another perspective, when conspiracy theories are put on the Internet and continue to proliferate – regardless of whether the Illuminati exist or not – they are enough to establish a New World Order. The real-world public opinions, as well as the composition of opinions and the basis of social discussions are changed, and thus world’s countries, politics and rulers are affected.