Few months before first people in Wuhan started feeling ill, Global Preparedness Monitoring Board (GPMB) issued a warning about a possible global pandemic which now seems grimly prophetic.

“There is a very real threat of a rapidly moving, highly lethal pandemic of a respiratory pathogen killing 50 to 80 million people.”

That’s from the opening paragraph of a report authored by the Global Preparedness Monitoring Board, an independent panel of experts which was assembled back in 2018 in response to a request from the office of the U.N. secretary-general, and convened jointly by the World Bank and World Health Organization (WHO).

Major media outlets reported about these warnings, much before novel coronavirus first appeared.

Foreignpolicy.com titled its article „The World knows an apocalyptic pandemic is coming“ and published it on September 20th 2019.

Their journalist Laurie Garrett opened with warning that there is “very real threat of a pandemic sweeping the planet, killing up to 80 million people“, adding that „a deadly pathogen, spread airborne around the world could wipe out almost 5 percent of the global economy“

Vox published their article the day before, on September 19th 2019 with the title „The next global pandemic could kill millions of us. Experts say we’re really not prepared“.

Voanews also reported about this.

What is chilling is that these reports were published months before Wei Guixian, a seafood merchant in Wuhan city’s Hua’nan market, one of the first suspected cases in a coronavirus pandemic, first started to feel sick on December 10th 2019.

Reading these reports today, it seems like a panel of experts predicted the coronavirus outbreak.

And who are these experts, whose warnings were quickly forgotten after they were publicized in September of 2019?

The 15-member Board is made up of political leaders, heads of agencies, and experts, led jointly by Dr Gro Harlem Brundtland, formerly Prime Minister of Norway and Director-General of the World Health Organization and Mr Elhadj As Sy, Secretary General of the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies.

It appears that leaders of the panel Gro Harlem Brundtland and Elhadj As Sy co-wrote an article which was published on Project Syndicate on October 21st 2019 and it started like this:

„Imagine the following scenario. In a matter of days, a lethal influenza pandemic spreads around the world, halting trade and travel, triggering social chaos, gutting the global economy, and endangering tens of millions of lives.“

Their warnings quickly came true.

Much before novel coronavirus emerged, Dr. Gro Harlem Brundtland also implored the international community to investigate possible animal reservoirs that could be a source for future outbreaks and better study the movement of the virus to humans.

Now she is working to support the WHO’s emergency response, vaccine development, timely distribution of medical supplies and other critical measures.

Recently, she wrote a letter in which she stated that the Elders, group of world leaders she is also a member, endorse the call of the Global Preparedness Monitoring Board, which she co-Chairs, for at least US$ 8 billion to be immediately injected into critical funding gaps to support the WHO.