The SPARS Pandemic 2025 – 2028
Reports & White Papers - Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security
In October 2017, the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security released a report entitled “SPARS Pandemic, 2025-2028: A Futuristic Scenario for Public Health Risk Communicators”. It is written from the perspective of someone in the year 2030, reflecting back on a large-scale outbreak that took place from 2025 – 2028. The main purpose of this exercise was anticipating the public perceptions at various points during an outbreak, while controlling the messaging and managing the reactions to the subsequent public heath responses.
As we've already documented, the John Hopkins Center for Health Security ran multiple pandemic exercises and wargames leading up to the 2020 Covid 19 crisis; Event 201, Clade X, and Dark Winter, just to name a few. The SPARS Pandemic document is significantly longer than previous ones we've examined and summarizing certain passages doesn't convey the magnitude of thought that's gone into managing the public response. For this reason, more excerpts will be used due to the specific language/jargon employed and the concerns raised within the exercise, all of which are highly relevant to the current SARS-CoV-2 situation.
The stated purpose of the SPARS exercise was to create a “futuristic scenario” that would allow participants to anticipate communication issues regarding medical countermeasures (MCM) used in response to a large-scale outbreak. The exercise simulated a worldwide pandemic where the participants had the opportunity to rehearse responses while also gauging the consequences of actions taken by governments, health authorities, and the media. The main focus is “communication dilemmas” that would arise in the event of a pandemic where there's conflicting information about the pathogen itself, and controversy/distrust over the government response.
The time frame in which the simulation took place, 2025 - 2028, was chosen in order to identify the “major socioeconomic, demographic, technological, and environmental trends likely to have emerged by that period”. The participants identified two dominant trends that were likely to influence government and public responses: “one; varying degrees of access to information technology; and two, varying levels of fragmentation among populations along social, political, religious, ideological, and cultural lines.”
After the variables were identified, a “scenario matrix” was created where the above-mentioned trends were accounted for, along with other constantly shifting and unpredictable factors that were likely to come into play.
“In the year 2025, the world has become simultaneously more connected, yet more divided. Nearly universal access to wireless internet and new technology—including internet accessing technology (IAT): thin, flexible screens that can be temporarily attached to briefcases, backpacks, or clothing and used to stream content from the internet—has provided the means for readily sharing news and information. However, many have chosen to self-restrict the sources they turn to for information, often electing to interact only with those with whom they agree. This trend has increasingly isolated cliques from one another, making communication across and between these groups more and more difficult.”“In regards to MCM communication more specifically, the US Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), and other public health agencies have increasingly adopted a diverse range of social media technologies, including long-existing platforms such as Facebook, Snapchat, and Twitter, as well as emerging platforms like ZapQ, a platform that enables users to aggregate and archive selected media content from other platforms and communicate with cloud-based social groups based on common interests and current events. Federal and state public health organizations have also developed agency-specific applications and ramped up efforts to maintain and update agency websites.”
THE SCENARIO:
“In mid-October 2025, three deaths were reported among members of the First Baptist Church of St. Paul, Minnesota. Two of the church members had recently returned from a missionary trip to the Philippines, where they provided relief to victims of regional floods. The third was the mother of a church member who had also traveled to the Philippines with the church group but who had been only mildly sick himself. Based on the patients’ reported symptoms, healthcare providers initially guessed that they had died from seasonal influenza, which health officials predicted would be particularly virulent and widespread that fall. However, laboratory tests were negative for influenza.
Unable to identify the causative agent, officials at the Minnesota Department of Health’s Public Health Laboratory sent the patients’ clinical specimens to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), where scientists confirmed that the patients did not have influenza. One CDC scientist recalled reading a recent ProMed dispatch describing the emergence of a novel coronavirus in Southeast Asia, and ran a pancoronavirus RT-PCR test. A week later, the CDC team confirmed that the three patients were, in fact, infected with a novel coronavirus, which was dubbed the St. Paul Acute Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus (SPARS-CoV, or SPARS), after the city where the first cluster of cases had been identified.
The CDC monitored the situation closely, working with partners in Southeast Asia to quickly develop a case definition for SPARS. Within four weeks of CDC publishing a working case definition on its website, nearly two hundred suspected cases of SPARS were reported across Minnesota and in six other states. Given that flu season was just getting underway and that a rapid diagnostic test for SPARS-CoV infection was not yet available, CDC officials could not be sure if these were, in fact, true cases of SPARS.”
“As transmission of SPARS was determined to occur via droplet spread, the CDC initially recommended that everyone diligently maintain hand hygiene and frequently disinfect potentially contaminated surfaces. CDC officials further urged anyone with severe flu-like symptoms to seek immediate medical attention. Public health officials were concerned that the upcoming Thanksgiving holiday and Black Friday shopping activities would facilitate the spread of SPARS, but they remained confident that the awareness and prevention messages disseminated annually for seasonal influenza, combined with isolation procedures for suspected cases, would be effective at countering the spread of SPARS. These messages were spread via a variety of traditional and social media sources, including Facebook, Instagram, Reddit, Twitter, and ZapQ.”
“Concern among many Americans about the severity of SPARS at this point in the outbreak was moderately high. The public’s concern was compounded by the apparent virulence of the pathogen. At the outset of the SPARS outbreak, physicians’ understanding of the disease stemmed primarily from extremely severe cases resulting in pneumonia or hypoxia that required hospitalization and extensive medical treatment. Mild cases of the disease, which produced symptoms including cough, fever, headaches, and malaise, were often perceived as the flu by the people who had them and consequently often went untreated and undiagnosed by medical personnel. As a result, early case fatality estimates were inflated. By late November, the CDC reported an initial estimated SPARS case fatality rate of 4.7% (By contrast, WHO reported that the overall case fatality rate for SARS was 14-15% and over 50% for people over the age of 64. Later in the SPARS outbreak, data that included more accurate estimates of mild SPARS cases indicated a case fatality rate of only 0.6%).”
“Two additional features of the SPARS virus that were not appreciated at the beginning of the pandemic, but that impacted how the outbreak played out, are also important to consider in a review of this event. First, the virus had an extended incubation period (seven to ten days) compared to its latent period (four to five days). Thus, infected persons could spread the virus for up to nearly a week before showing symptoms of the disease themselves. As a result, isolating sick SPARS patients proved to be less effective than isolating patients infected by other, better-characterized respiratory diseases. Second, morbidity and mortality from SPARS were both significantly higher in children than adults. Pregnant women and those with chronic respiratory conditions like asthma and emphysema were also at a higher risk for both disease complications and death.”
“By mid-December, SPARS cases were reported in 26 states, and the Ministries of Health in Mexico, Canada, Brazil, Japan, and several European countries had notified the WHO of dozens of imported cases. There was widespread concern in public health circles that travel over the Christmas and New Year’s holidays would spark a global pandemic. The WHO, which had declared the SPARS epidemic to be a PHEIC (Public Health Emergency of International Concern) on November 25, was actively engaged in preventing further spread of the disease internationally. However, the WHO’s efforts promoted interventions originally designed for influenza and other similar respiratory pathogens, such as hygiene, social distancing, and isolation of suspected cases, all of which were less effective against SPARS.”
“At that time, no treatment or vaccine for SPARS was approved for use in humans. The antiviral Kalocivir, which was initially developed as a therapeutic for Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) and Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (MERS), was one of several antiviral drugs authorized in the United States by the FDA to treat a handful of severe SPARS cases under its Expanded Access protocol. Kalocivir had shown some evidence of efficacy against other coronaviruses, and a small inventory of the drug was already a part of the Strategic National Stockpile (SNS) in anticipation of FDA approval, despite some concerns about potential adverse side effects. The lack of concrete information regarding potential treatments in the face of the increasingly rapid spread of SPARS prompted demands from the media, the public, and political leaders for the FDA to be more forthcoming with information on potential treatment options.”
TREATMENT AND VACCINES:
Once again, the main purpose of this particular exercise was controlling the flow of information and anticipating the public's concerns, while finding ways to mitigate those concerns and the spread of any information that questioned the government's responses and solutions (including treatments and vaccines). They tested “fear-based” messaging and found it to be less effective than positive messaging such as “seeing health care providers for SPARS-like symptoms can help you and your family members live long and happy lives.”
“After laboratory tests confirmed that the coronavirus affecting livestock in Southeast Asia was closely related to SPARS-CoV, the US began an extensive review of GMI’s animal vaccine development and testing processes. Shortly thereafter, federal health authorities awarded a contract to CynBio, a US-based pharmaceutical company, to develop a SPARS vaccine based on the GMI model. The contract included requirements for safety testing, ensuring the vaccine would be safe and effective for human use. It also provided considerable funding from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and included provisions for priority review by the FDA. Additionally, HHS Secretary Nagel agreed in principle to invoke the Public Readiness and Emergency Preparedness Act (PREP Act), thereby providing liability protection for CynBio and future vaccine providers in the event that vaccine recipients experienced any adverse effects.”
“Maintaining Trust in Government Processes for Ensuring the Timely Development of Safe and Effective Vaccines:
How might federal health authorities avoid people possibly seeing an expedited SPARS vaccine development and testing process as somehow “rushed” and inherently flawed, even though that process still meets the same safety and efficacy standards as any other vaccine?
How might federal health authorities respond to critics who propose that liability protection for SPARS vaccine manufacturers jeopardizes individual freedom and wellbeing?
Once the vaccine becomes broadly available (see the chapter, “Head of the Line Privileges”), how might public health communicators implement the “best practices” principle of enabling people to make their own informed decisions about whether to accept the novel SPARS vaccine?
What are the potential consequences of health officials over-reassuring the public about the potential risks of a novel SPARS vaccine when long-term effects are not yet known?”
In the SPARS scenario, a three year old boy is hospitalized after a severe, adverse reaction to the treatment and the story immediately goes viral on social media, causing a backlash to the official treatment. Natural treatments began trending online, creating an entire movement opposed to the government sanctioned protocols. This overwhelms the ability of local, state, and federal agencies to respond and “compliance with public health and medical recommendations dropped considerably”. The messaging governments and public health authorities issued in response to the widespread distrust of the official treatment failed and the public instead “formed its own conclusions”.
“While most government agencies including the CDC and HHS had long-established offices that were directed to coordinate social media and other communication efforts, the protocols of individual agencies and different agency cultures led to delayed and sometimes uncoordinated messages. Compounding this situation was the social media outreach conducted by individual members of the government. Several members of Congress were very active on sites like Twitter where they could leverage their office to spread their own personal beliefs under the guise of public positions.”
In the scenario, public trust in treatments continues to deteriorate. In response, other countries authorize a second antiviral medication while the US decides to focus their efforts on the initial treatment (called Kalocivir in the scenario), along with developing a vaccine to fight SPARS (Corovax). As other countries use the internet and social media platforms to exchange information about the new treatment, the “persistent social media buzz around the pandemic ensured that public anxiety remained high —even though the incidence of new SPARS cases had begun to taper off.”
“By May 2026, public interest in SPARS had begun to wane. In late April the CDC had publicized an updated case fatality rate estimate, suggesting the SPARS was only fatal in 0.6% of cases in the United States (where access to medical treatment was available). This figure matched public sentiment, widely expressed on social media, that SPARS was not as dangerous as initially thought. Combined with persisting doubts about Kalocivir and the lack of a commercially available SPARS vaccine, the new, lower case fatality rate estimate led the public to grow increasingly hostile toward continued SPARS messaging.
In order to overcome the public’s disinterest, the CDC and FDA, in concert with other government agencies and their social media experts, began developing a new public health messaging campaign about SPARS, Kalocivir, and the forthcoming vaccine, Corovax. The purpose of this campaign was to create a core set of messages that could be shared by all public health and government agencies over the next several months during which time the SPARS vaccine would be introduced. Even though the disease was less fatal than initially thought, it remained expensive to treat in its severe form and even mild cases had substantial impacts on economic productivity across the country.
In late May, three messages were approved by the cross-agency committee established to produce the messaging campaign: one addressing the nature and risks of SPARS, one regarding the effectiveness of Kalocivir, and one about the anticipated release of Corovax. These messages were broadly shared via all relevant government agencies’ internet and social media accounts. In an effort to further reach certain population subgroups, agency officials enlisted the help of well-known scientists, celebrities, and government officials to make short videos and Zap clips and, in a few cases, give interviews to major media outlets. Among those chosen were former President Jaclyn Bennett; BZee, a popular hip-hop star; and Paul Farmer, co-founder of Partners in Health and a renowned global health expert.”
In the SPARS exercise, this messaging produced “mixed results” and did nothing to reduce “public confusion”. The use of the “popular hip-hop star BZee” to promote the narrative ends up causing significant push back from the African-American community after he cites the Tuskegee experiments as an example of African-Americans' “participation” in previous medical experiments and contributions to SPARS vaccine research. This is just one example of the unintended consequences that are examined in the SPARS scenario regarding the messaging from governments and public health authorities.
In the end, it's decided that all the government-recommended treatments were less effective at treating SPARS than originally thought. The CDC goes on to suggest that healthcare providers administer palliative care, and over-the-counter medications for more mild cases of SPARS. In June 2026, the SPARS vaccine Corovax enters it's final stage of review and a debate over who should get the vaccine first ensues.
In order to help determine which groups should be vaccinated first, the US government resorts to controversial tactics such as allowing healthcare providers and third parties access to patients' electronic health records. This information is also used to determine the most effective “points of dispensing” (PODs), such as schools, doctors' offices, and pharmacies. All of these actions add to the public backlash against the totality of the government's response to SPARS.
A significant portion of the SPARS exercise is dedicated to the issue of “anti-vaxxers”. The scenario attempts to identify which demographics are most likely to be resistant to a vaccine in order to find effective ways of responding to these groups.
“Early on in the Corovax vaccination campaign, anti-vaccination groups began emerging on social media platforms. These groups initially came from four primary sources: Muslim groups across the country, who opposed the vaccine on the basis that the original formulation was used to treat pigs; African Americans, who refused vaccination based on continued fear of governmental experimentation on African American populations; alternative medicine proponents, who had also been active in campaigning against Kalocivir; and anti-vaccination activists, who were galvanized by the anti-anti-vaccination sentiment associated with the nationwide measles outbreak in 2015.
With the exception of this last group, none of the anti-vaccination movements were cohesively organized initially, existing primarily in small, isolated pockets across the country. The general anti-vaccination proponents, however, existed as a core, national group long before the SPARS pandemic. Following the 2015 measles outbreak in the United States, this group united online. By 2016, they had created several primary Facebook groups and numerous Twitter accounts and began using hashtags like #NoVaccines4Me and #VaccinesKill. The anti-vaccination movement migrated to ZapQ upon its emergence in 2022 due to its ability to combine feeds from across multiple platforms, including real-time text, picture, and video messages from members as well as select traditional media posts such as videos, texts, or streaming news feeds on a single interface that could be used on IAT and other mobile platforms. Additionally, through their ability to control group membership, these groups ensured that they would not be exposed to pro-vaccine “propaganda” from pharmaceutical companies, the federal government, or public health or medical authorities. By 2026, many core members of the anti-vaccine movement obtained their national news almost exclusively from anti-vaccine ZapQ sites.”
“…the US government added a new, aggressive advertising campaign to its pro-vaccination efforts. This campaign provided targeted internet advertisements to individuals as they conducted web searches or visited anti-vaccination websites. If someone searched Google for “Corovax side effects,” for example, a sidebar advertisement appeared on the results page explaining the benefits of the vaccine. Likewise, if someone wished to view the Kalocivir vomiting video on YouTube, they would first have to watch either a montage of pictures illustrating the effects of SPARS or a clip of Paul Farmer’s explanation of Corovax’s benefits. This advertisement campaign required government officials to leverage relationships in the information technology industry, including the many companies involved with social media, but the impact was worth the effort. Vaccination rates eventually began increasing across all targeted demographics except the most recalcitrant anti-vaccine activists.”
THE AFTERMATH AND ADVERSE EFFECTS FROM THE VACCINE
“As time passed and more people across the United States were vaccinated, claims of adverse side effects began to emerge. Several parents claimed that their children were experiencing neurological symptoms similar to those seen among livestock exposed to the GMI vaccine. By May 2027, parental anxiety around this claim had intensified to the point of lawsuits. That month, a group of parents whose children developed mental retardation as a result of encephalitis in the wake of Corovax vaccination sued the federal government, demanding removal of the liability shield protecting the pharmaceutical companies responsible for developing and manufacturing Corovax.”
“To reach members of these groups—which, with the exception of the pocketed communities, were largely spread throughout the country—the US government added a new, aggressive advertising campaign to its pro-vaccination efforts. This campaign provided targeted internet advertisements to individuals as they conducted web searches or visited anti-vaccination websites. If someone searched Google for “Corovax side effects,” for example, a sidebar advertisement appeared on the results page explaining the benefits of the vaccine.”
“This advertisement campaign required government officials to leverage relationships in the information technology industry, including the many companies involved with social media, but the impact was worth the effort.”
“As the pandemic tapered off, several influential politicians and agency representatives came under fire for sensationalizing the severity of the event for perceived political gain. As with many public health interventions, successful efforts to reduce the impact of the pandemic created the illusion that the event was not nearly as serious as experts suggested it would be. President Archer’s detractors in the Republican Party seized the opportunity to publicly disparage the President and his administration’s response to the pandemic, urging voters to elect “a strong leader with the best interests of the American people at heart.” A widespread social media movement led primarily by outspoken parents of affected children, coupled with widespread distrust of “big pharma,” supported the narrative that the development of SPARS MCMs was unnecessary and driven by a few profit-seeking individuals. Conspiracy theories also proliferated across social media, suggesting that the virus had been purposely created and introduced to the population by drug companies or that it had escaped from a government lab secretly testing bioweapons.
After-action reports, government hearings, and agency reviews following the pandemic were too numerous to count. Emergency funding appropriated by Congress to fight the disease became available partway through the course of the pandemic, but federal, state, and local public health agencies struggled to manage the procedural requirements to spend it. As a result, significant amounts of emergency funds remained unused as the pandemic wound down. As the investigations grew in intensity, several high-ranking officials at the CDC and FDA were forced to step down and withdraw from government in order to “spend more time with their families.” Exhausted employees of these agencies, many of whom worked long hours six or seven days a week throughout the pandemic, simply wanted to put the whole response behind them. Little desire remained on the part of decision-makers or those who served in the trenches during the response to rehash the events of the past several years.”
(An interesting part of this exercise that's gone unmentioned in other reporting on the SPARS simulation;
In July 29, 2026, just before Corovax was to become publicly available in the United States, the power grid at Grand Coulee Dam in Washington State experienced a “catastrophic failure”, causing widespread blackouts in Washington, Oregon, Idaho, Montana, and British Columbia. Because of the power outages, people living in the affected areas were unable to access information regarding the Corovax distribution plan. This seems like an odd event to include in this particular pandemic scenario, but catastrophic power grid and infrastructure failures are becoming a common theme in the media and wargames being run by our governments, private entities, and globalist organizations such as the World Economic Forum.)
There were multiple exercises and wargames before the SARS-CoV-2 outbreak, all run by the same agencies, institutions, and people who are now leading the Covid 19 response. These participants have direct ties to bioweapons research, the defense industry, and the US intelligence apparatus. Some even made headlines (on multiple occasions) by declaring the likelihood of a worldwide pandemic during the first term of the Trump administration, while appointing themselves the authorities on any public health/government response.
There's still a large amount of conflicting data on SARS-CoV-2 and blatant censorship of any dissenting opinions and facts that don't fit the official narrative, including having credible, peer-reviewed research papers removed from circulation. The involvement of globalist organizations who have minimal expertise in medicine or science raises legitimate questions about the origins of Covid 19 and the response to the crisis, especially given these organizations' publicly stated agendas. The extreme response and government overreach in western countries continues to raise the concern that Covid 19 was a pre-planned event.
The SPARS Pandemic 2025 - 2028:
A Futuristic Scenario for Public Health Risk Communications