Tabletop exercises (TTXs) play a crucial role in pandemic preparedness, serving as a powerful tool for testing and refining response strategies in a controlled, hypothetical environment. These exercises, typically conducted in a meeting-room setting, bring together diverse stakeholders such as public health officials, emergency responders, government leaders, and healthcare providers to simulate a pandemic scenario. By navigating through this simulated crisis, participants can identify gaps in current plans, improve communication channels, and foster a deeper understanding of the roles and responsibilities of different agencies and individuals. 

In this week’s facilitated group discussion, you will take part in your own tabletop exercise, a modified version of Johns Hopkins Centre for Health Security’s Clade X exercise(<https://centerforhealthsecurity.org/our-work/tabletop-exercises/clade-x-tabletop-exercise>). Most of the pre-reading for this week is in preparation for this TTX.

By the end of the unit, you should be able to:
\- Solidify your understanding of the previous weeks’ material by applying it in a ‘real-world’ scenario.
\- Have an appreciation for the incentives of various stakeholders involved in a pandemic response, and experience some of the stakeholder-management difficulties and trade-offs that occur.


Resources: Tabletop Exercise

Exercises: Tabletop Exercise

You should have been assigned one of the following roles for this week's Clade X tabletop exercise. **Spend 30-60 mins researching your role, powers and responsibilities. **You may also want to skim the other roles and consider how you might interact with them.

- Secretary of Health and Human Services (HHS)
- Secretary of Homeland Security
- Senate Majority Leader
- CDC Director
- Secretary of State
- CIA Director
- Secretary of Defense
- Member, U.S. House of Representatives

**Write up any notes in the box below.**


Research your role for the Clade X Tabletop Exercise

Recalling and reflecting on previous learnings is an excellent way to deepen your understanding and help retain them in your memory.

**Pick one of last session’s deep-dives which you didn’t read about, but which one of your cohort presented about in the discussion session.** From memory, spend roughly 10 minutes trying to write up your understanding of the intervention using the following prompts:
​
- Explain the technology and its relevance to outbreak response
- What are the strengths of this intervention and in which contexts might it be the most effective for outbreak response?
- In which contexts might this intervention be rendered ineffective?
- How well does this intervention score against the factors you established in week 3 discussion?

As a reminder, the interventions covered were:

1. Rapid vaccine development
2. Therapeutics
3. Personal protective equipment (PPE)
4. Indoor air quality interventions



[Optional] Reflection on emerging technologies to strengthen pandemic response

Pandemics

Make high-stakes decisions in a simulated pandemic scenario.

Tabletop Exercise

How do we make pandemics a thing of the past?

Building a Pandemic-Proof World

How could new technologies both increase and reduce the risk of pandemics?

Pandemic Risk Over the Coming Decades

What does it take to prevent the first human infection?

Preventing Patient Zero

How do we stop a local outbreak from becoming a global disaster?

Detecting and Containing Early Infections

How can governments minimise harms when a pandemic spreads worldwide?

Governmental Response to a Global Pandemic

How could new innovations help us prepare for and prevent future pandemics?

Pandemics

Resources: Tabletop Exercise

Resources (25 mins)