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After being caught with its masks down, it would be reckless not to discuss strategies for the next potential pandemic that might occur, like the hypothetical Disease X.

It may sound like the title for a horror movie, but Disease X is not part of a Davos-led conspiracy to save the ozone layer but a hypothetical disease that formed the basis for discussions At the World Economic Forum on how to deal with the next big pandemic. Pandemic! Part Deux.

Needless to say the panel’s announcement did trigger conspiracy talk among right-wing social media accounts, who claimed that world leaders were “initiating the next epidemic or trying to restrict free expression and reinstall mask regulations”.

According to the World Health Organization (WHO), the discussions are intended to mitigate COVID-19-era devastation on people and economies, with losses in the trillions of dollars having been a wake-up call.

Disease X is not a real thing, but refers to a ‘potential novel infectious agent that represents an illness which is currently unknown, but could pose a serious microbial threat to humans in the future’.

Scientists with degrees in science say there are a huge amount of viruses that float around our natural wildlife and could become a source of a new infectious disease to which humans do not have immunity.  In 2018, the World Health Organization added Disease X to a list of pathogens that are a top priority for research, alongside known killers like Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) and Ebola.

Naming and shaming a non-existent disease allows for preparations like creating vaccines and treatments for any potential diseases.

COVID-19 has killed approximately seven million people around the world. In 2023, healthcare professionals warned that any new pandemic could be even deadlier – killing an estimated 50 million people worldwide.

Healthcare experts at the Davos summit on Wednesday said that planning for Disease X might help save lives and money, if countries start research and preventative steps before a recognised epidemic.

“Of course, some argue that this may cause panic. It is preferable to anticipate and prepare for something that may occur since it has happened many times in our history,” said WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, who participated in the panel.

WHO has already started implementing measures to prepare for another outbreak. This includes a pandemic fund and a “technology transfer hub” in South Africa that enables the local production of vaccines and would help overcome issues of vaccine inequity across high and low-income countries.

Preparing for the next ‘big one’ will require a much more united effort than in 2019/20. International cooperation will have to be coordinated. This could include figuring out how to increase hospital capacity, speed up the supply of treatment, and adopt new technologies to support medical workers.

While COVID-19 cost the world about $16 trillion, global investments of just $124bn over five years could make the world significantly better prepared for major epidemics in the future.

Methods such as ‘increased surveillance of diseases’ are however one of the topics that seem to have gotten under the skin of a lot of people.

Despite the real need for discussions about future pandemics, the tinfoil-hat brigade was not buying it. Discussions about any pandemics were quickly ‘seen through as just another attempt to restrict freedoms’, while the more extreme views included accusations that governments were prepping to release another plague soon.

In a post on X (where paranoia flowers best), former Trump administration official Monica Crowley suggested that the panel was ‘signalling the advent of a preplanned disease’.

“Just in time for the election, a new contagion to allow them to implement a new WHO treaty, lockdown again, restrict free speech and destroy more freedoms”, she wrote.