.
Tuesday, May 15, 2018 The training tabletop exercise is based on a fictional CLADE X novel virus, cause of pandemic in the exercise. The document provides an overview of the exercise format and scenario. The fictious background: The leadership of a sophisticated life science laboratory with commercially available equipment focused on developing a biological weapon that would have a global impact. They also seem to have been attracted to the concept of a biblical plague as the corrective to humanity’s excesses. Several PhD-level scientists were responsible for various aspects of the bioweapons program, which included molecular and classical microbiology, aerobiology, and testing and evaluation. In the scenario story, the Clade X pathogen is a hybrid of 2 similar viruses, theorized to retain both their lethality and the transmissibility. The virus was theorized to be antigenically distinct from the 4 existing HPIV serotypes. The biological properties of the made-up Clade X virus are not novel, but there is no real-world evidence that such a hybrid virus has actually been engineered, nor has it been identified in nature. In the fictitious story, the Clade X designers are imagined to be aided by animal and cell culture methods, animal models, and reverse genetic systems. It is also assumed in the story that the designers are not limited by ethical and moral standards, so they may use human test subjects rather than only cell culture and animal models. The Clade X pathogen was imagined to be designed with a hybrid approach of rational and irrational methods. Rational approaches involve determining what genetic sequence performs a desired function and incorporating that into a build-design test loop. It has the advantage of being precise, targeted, and fast. Irrational genetic engineering involves an iterative approach of random mutation or recombination followed by screening or selection. This approach has the advantage of evolving features. Once the Clade X pathogen had been successfully developed and manufactured, volunteer members, who were willing to risk being infected, traveled the globe with small volumes of liquid agent, which they disseminated using commercially available aerosolizers in crowded public places. Prepared as background material by the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security for the Clade X tabletop exercise, the fictious model assumes that the first cases of Clade X in the world are the result of deliberate attacks in two cities. The inputs experts used for modeling the potential impact were fictional. The document is a teaching and training resource for public health and government officials. It concludes with recommendations from the Center on high-level strategic decisions and policies needed to prevent a severe pandemic or diminish its consequences should prevention fail. (Source: CenterforHealthSecurity):
https://tinyurl.com/4jcxm2a
.23 6 9 00:35
