Yeah, they've been scenario planning in earnest for about 20 years. It started more or less in conjunction with the anthrax events in the US in the midst of the wmd debacle. Going back to read through the write ups that followed each 5 year scenario planning session, they started fairly loose. As they approach 2019, they sure do feel like they tighten into the shape of what we've now lived through. This last writeup, it's not an exact set of steps, a step 1-20 baking recipe, for sure. But you don't really have to squint your eyes very hard at all to see 2019-present waving at you from out of those pages. The names are fiction, the nitty gritty specifics don't match, but the major story beats are there, and quite a few of the minor ones as well. For me, it's way past a list of generic things a society should do in a pandemic, things to bear in mind, should a pandemic come along. It's way too close an overlap to lived experience in my mind to dismiss.
Re: A weird change in the narrative