On October 23, 2017 The Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security released the SPARS Scenario, a pandemic simulation event, portraying a futureistic scenario for public health risk communicators, where a new virus infects mankind in 2025 and continues until 2028. The self-guided tabletop training experience challenged public health communicators and risk communication researchers to consider the complex messaging dilemmas of a future outbreak, which required the development of a new vaccine. [1, 2]
The fictitious outbreak of the novel SPARS coronavirus is first identified in a major US city in 2025, over 3 years it spreads world wide and the case fatality rates vary depending on the capabilities of local health systems.