NYC Health + Hospitals/Kings County SARS Pandemic Response Simulation

Materials from a January 2019 pandemic response simulation event conducted in NYC Health + Hospitals

After learning about a January 2019 pandemic simulation event in New York City’s public hospital system that was featured in a Netflix series a year later, I was able to obtain some of the materials used with participants in the event.

Below readers will find a video about the event, a link to the Netflix episode, the FOIL request, the FOIL response, and the responsive documents. The scenario should look very familiar.

I will link this page to another post I’m working on.

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YouTube video about the event

Featured in Episode 1 of “Pandemic: How to Prevent an Outbreak” (released on Netflix January 22, 2020, the day after the first U.S. case of novel coronavirus 2019 was announced)

FOIL Request to NYC HHC:

All handbooks, PowerPoint slides, and other materials that were used with and/or given to participants  in the NYC Health + Hospitals/King County SARS Pandemic Response Simulation, conducted in or around Feb 2019, featured in this video. 

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Email Response from NYC HHC

Please see attached responsive records to your request.

• Briefing for Outbreak Simulation

• Amerco Deployment Schedule

• Amerco Outbreak Simulation pre/post Survey Questionnaire

Re: “A list of all participants in the simulation, whether instructors, “students”, or administrators in the simulation experience.”

No responsive records have been found for the list of participants.

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Briefing for Outbreak Simulation (PowerPoint slides)

Image directly above is from the PowerPoint presentation; it is not something I inserted.

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Added Post-Publication:

Earlier this year, I asked Dr. Pierre Kory - who has a background in medical simulation - whether he thought it was possible he walked into a kind of live-exercise simulation using real patients at Mount Sinai Beth Israel in late April 2020. He said no, albeit indirectly. Video excerpt:

See also number 7) in my letter to him for further evaluation.

Dr. Colleen Smith of Elmhurst Hospital/New York Times fame also has simulation experience.

In April 2020, Jason Goodman contacted NYC “ventilator whistleblower” Dr. Cameron Kyle-Sidell to ask if he thought he was part of a simulation and whether he knew Dr. Smith. Kyle-Sidell said Smith had been his resident.¹

A June 2020 “storytelling event” involved Smith, Kyle-Sidell, and other NYC hospital doctors speaking about their experiences in late March/April in rather fictionalized, dissociative manner.²

1. I consider Kyle-Sidell to be a staged whistleblower but do not currently have an opinion as to whether he was fully aware of that.

2. My year-old X thread with several videos from this event. (See also this thread.)