“The exercise will be called Event 201 in honor of the… potential pandemic.”
The announcement was once available on the internet but pulled offline for reasons unknown. The Dossier has unearthed the audio clip that confirms the plan for Event 201 was hatched at the WEF’s Davos 2019. The theme of Davos that year was “Globalization 4.0: Shaping a Global Architecture in the Age of the Fourth Industrial Revolution.”
The remarkable similarities and the timing between Event 201 and the actual coronavirus pandemic has led to questions about whether the parties to the simulation had prior knowledge of what would happen in the coming weeks and months ahead. Moreover, the stakeholders who sponsored and participated in Event 201 would unanimously benefit enormously from the pandemic and wield monopolistic power in pandemic policymaking.
As the Dossier recently reported, we discovered that the first public announcement for Event 201 was made on the sidelines of the World Economic Forum’s 2019 annual meeting in Davos. Thanks to the work of our valuable online sleuths, we’ve obtained the recorded audio from the panel, which was not available online.
Before we get to the clip, here’s some background:
On January 23, 2019, Tom Inglesby, the director of the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security, announced the plan for Event 201, in partnership with the Gates Foundation and the World Economic Forum. His organization would later host the event in New York City just weeks before the pandemic broke out. Inglesby, for his part, would later become a senior adviser in the Biden White House. He tweeted out the announcement after he delivered his remarks. As the Dossier has reported, the first person to retweet the announcement was Ron Klain, who would later become the Biden White House chief of staff
Excited to announce today that @JHSPH_CHS + @wef + @gatesfoundation partnering in Oct 2019 exercise called "Event 201" that will engage leaders from global business, national governments, international orgs in response to novel pandemic #Davos2019 1/2
— Tom Inglesby, MD (@T_Inglesby) January 23, 2019
Event 201 will shine light on need for pub health, global business, science, finance, security & political leadership to be fully engaged + working for common purposes to meet challenge of new pandemic. Business will need gov, and gov will need business #wef #Davos2019 2/2
— Tom Inglesby, MD (@T_Inglesby) January 23, 2019
Inglesby made the Event 201 announcement during a panel on “Acting Against A Risk That Business Cannot Ignore,” which took place in the SDG (short for U.N. Sustainable Development Goals) tent at Davos 2019. The panel was sponsored by UPS and Johnson & Johnson. It featured top executives at J&J and Merck, the executive director of the Bill Gates-controlled Global Fund, and the president of the UPS Foundation.
For epidemic readiness session, Richard Edelman on the number of journalists covering health being significantly diminished. @EdelmanPR @JNJNews @UPS @TheENDFund #WEF19 pic.twitter.com/unlG0194c1
— Heather Haines (@HeatherRHaines) January 23, 2019
The Dossier has transcribed some of the audio from Inglesby’s announcement “highlighting an upcoming event,” which is available in full below. Here are some of the interesting quotes:
“Now imagine that in this coming year, with 200 epidemic events already straining resources around the world, we have an event two hundred and one. Event 201. But this event is the severe pandemic that we’ve all been preparing for and working to avoid and mitigate.”
“So how would the WHO and national governments respond if this occurred in 2019? What would be the impact on global business?”
“And could global businesses help national governments and international NGOs, UN organizations, to dramatically diminish the impact of the pandemic.”
“We are excited to announce that our Center is working with WEF (World Economic Forum) and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation to hold a major pandemic exercise in October of 2019 which will draw together global business and the WHO and national government to consider these issues and shine a light on them and see if we can identify paths forward.”
“The exercise will be called Event 201 in honor of the, uh, potential pandemic. It will involve global business leaders, officials from national governments and international organizations.”
“Bill Gates has emphasized over and over again in his public announcements how important it is to have security aligned with national government and public health in a pandemic event like this.
“It has even led to the development of new vaccines and the stockpiling of vaccines, and major legislation has resulted.”
“To get a scope of the kinds of challenges and intensity of the exercise we are planning for October of 2019, we have a very short movie trailer that came … to get you in the mood of what this exercise is going to be like.”
*trailer clip plays*
Quotes from trailer:
“We are continuing our coverage of a new and deadly infectious disease.”
“The creation and intentional release of the clade-x virus.
“Federal quarantine on this scale is unprecedented”
“The question everywhere: when will there be a vaccine?”
“They know that we don’t have a vaccine yet. They want vaccines to be prioritized.”
“More than 40 countries are reporting outbreaks and many more are suspected of having cases.”
“What the world will look like when it’s done is still very uncertain.”
*Back to Inglesby*
“We know that exercises can unsettle people, can open eyes, and generate new action.”
The Dossier has provided the audio obtained from the full panel. The Inglesby announcement begins at 45:45 in the audio clip below.