It has been a year since the Chinese identified an unknown outbreak, eventually becoming the now well-known SARS-COV-2 or COVID-19 outbreak. Why did it happen? Did it need to happen? Could it have been prevented? These are all questions many of us have been asking ourselves for almost a year. Where are the answers? The answers seem to evade us despite the many Task Forces established by governments around the world. Despite the World Health Organization, the Center for Disease Control, or their counterparts in every country for the specific purpose of mitigating the effects of these kinds of outbreaks. Were they not prepared?

I recently came across the above video produced by the BBC in 2018, documenting efforts to better predict and control the outcome of these types of outbreaks. You must watch the video. Please be sure to pay close attention to not just the audio content but also the image content. If you do, you will find several items of interest. Things like the preparedness efforts already being undertaken to ensure PPE was available. The images of existing flu viruses, which are coronaviruses. The spike structure viruses use to enter into the cells. The fact an app existed back then specifically for tracking infected individuals and their contact with others. There are so many things in this video we have been told for the last year were new because we were dealing with a novel virus, yet here they were discussed in 2018.

The discussion on how long it takes to develop a vaccine and the method of development. Why do the new vaccines use the untried mRNA process rather than dead viral material? The video raises so many questions. More so now that we have been in a pandemic for almost a year than it did when it was produced.

Towards the end of the video, the narrator makes a statement about the data they gathered in producing the video being the new gold standard in data for modeling pandemic outbreaks. What did they do with this gold standard data between then and the SARS-COV-2 outbreak? Why were we so ill-prepared?

As shown in the video, if the modeling they did produced such drastic results, why wasn't it taken more seriously? Again towards the end, why is hand washing the only mitigation effort discussed? Was contact infection thought to be the only mechanism of infection? Yet, the video does not even purport to trace physical contact infection but proximity infection. Why did they not model the use of masks, social distancing, or quarantining? Practices the laypeople interviewed said they would automatically do if there were a pandemic.

You may draw your conclusion. However, I still believe the medical and science communities, in concert with governments, have been engaged in one big experiment to determine how effectively populations can be controlled. Not that the virus does not exist. I am sure it does. But it has been a tool to this specific end. The control will not go away.

Click on the video to view in YouTube for sound.