Back in 2018, Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security ran a tabletop roleplaying exercise called Clade-X that simulated the outbreak of a virus worldwide. The same people running this performance were also responsible for such favorites as Dark Winter in 2001, and Event 201 in October of 2019, just six months before COVID came on the scene.
Whether it is anthrax attacks or novel coronaviruses, the people at Johns Hopkins always seem to have the best luck when it comes to predicting the future. They simulated Judith Miller from the New York Times getting anthrax mailed to her in their simulation called Dark Winter, and then a few months later it actually happened in real life, except the anthrax was fake. Weird.