Publications are circulating on social networks that affirm that the co-founder of Microsoft, Bill Gateswould have “predicted” that the next pandemic will take place in 2025. The viral messages indicate that, according to Gates’ predictions, the epidemic will be caused by the “SEERS” virus and warn that the businessman would have referred to it at the event ” Catastrophic Contagion”.
“The COVID-19 pandemic is over, but by 2025 Bill Gates has already predicted a new pandemic of the new SEERS virus”, “Bill Gates and the WHO are preparing for their next ‘plandemic’: the SEERS virus in 2025”, say publications shared on Facebook, Twitter and TikTok since at least December 2022. They are accompanied by photographs of the Microsoft co-founder and headlines on web portals with the same text as the one shared by the messages.
However, it is not true that Bill Gates has “predicted” a new pandemic that will take place in 2025. Although in October 2022 the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Securitytogether with Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and the World Health Organization (WHO), carried out the exercise entitled “Catastrophic Contagion”, this “does not present evidence of pandemic planning or serve as a prediction”, but was merely an educational and fictitious exercise, as the Johns Hopkins Center has confirmed to Newtral.es.
The initiative was based on the simulation of a pandemic in the future, set in 2025 and caused by the appearance of the fictitious SEERS virus, which stands for “severe epidemic enterovirus respiratory syndrome” (severe epidemic respiratory syndrome by enterovirus in Spanish).
[Las afirmaciones falsas o engañosas sobre el coronavirus de la imagen titulada “Nos están mintiendo”]
Bill Gates participated in the simulation of a pandemic that was set in 2025 and caused by the fictional virus “SEERS”
The publications that we are verifying indicate that Gates’s prediction would have been formulated in the “Catastrophic Contagion” event, where he warned of the SEERS virus that would be more lethal than that of COVID-19. A search for the keywords “Bill Gates pandemic 2025 Catastrophic Contagion” yields the Web page from the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security.
This website details that the Johns Hopkins Center, together with the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and the WHO, carried out the “Catastrophic Contagion” exercise in Brussels on October 23, 2022. The initiative also included the participation of Ministers and former Ministers of Health and senior public health officials from Senegal, Rwanda, Nigeria, Angola, Liberia, Singapore, India and Germany.
The exercise was based on a simulation, set in 2025, of a new epidemic caused by the emergence of the fictitious “SEERS” virus or “severe enterovirus epidemic respiratory syndrome”. Cases began to be reported in a specific country until they spread globally, “with a higher mortality rate than COVID-19 and disproportionately affecting children and young people,” according to the initiative’s website.
In this exercise, the participants had to simulate meetings of the WHO emergency health advisory board to discuss the response to said pandemic, “challenging [estos] to make urgent political decisions with limited information in the face of uncertainty”, explains the project website. In addition, each decision entailed “health, economic and social” consequences.
The “Catastrophic Contagion” exercise was educational and fictitious, not a prediction
However, at no time is it indicated that the initiative was a prediction by Bill Gates about the next pandemic for 2025 and caused by the “SEERS” virus. Both in the description of the exercise and in the videos produced showing its development, it is indicated that it is a “fictitious scenario”.
Likewise, in statements to Newtral.es, the communications director of the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security, Cagla Giray, has stressed that the initiative “does not present evidence of planning for a new pandemic nor are we forecasting a, but it is an exercise in which meetings are simulated to address a fictitious pandemic ”. Giray also adds that the goal was to “highlight preparedness and the ability to respond effectively and in a timely manner in a fictitious epidemic scenario.”
The Johns Hopkins Center re-emphasized that “the fictional scenario was educational and in no way predictive” in a Tweet published on December 13, 2022. In addition, verification verifiers of Reuters and PolitiFact —which, like Newtral.es, are members of the International Fact-Checking Network— also denied the hoax, since the contents circulated in English.
Summary
In conclusion, posts that claim that Bill Gates has “predicted” that the next pandemic will occur in 2025 and will be caused by the “SEERS” virus are misleading. Gates was part of the “Catastrophic Contagion” educational exercise simulating a new pandemic following the emergence of the fictitious “SEERS” virus conducted by the Johns Hopkins Center in October 2022. However, it was an educational initiative to assess the response to a possible epidemic in the future, without any kind of predictive nature.
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Bill Gates has not “forecast” that the next pandemic will take place in 2025 or that it will be caused by the “SEERS” virus