Actual Headline: “China Is Testing an Unproven Malaria Drug on an Entire African Nation”
The drug works to eliminate the parasite in humans such that it can no longer be transmissible via mosquitoes. The unproven drug was given to everyone on the island across three waves of treatments — all 700,000 inhabitants — despite it not being approved for use in humans by any international health body.
My Prediction in Hard as Roxx:
2019
• Dr. Heinz Radler announced a breakthrough in anti-malarial treatment, via a treatable “microvirus.” Infected patients can be injected with the microvirus, which binds with the Plasmodium falciparum parasite that causes malaria, killing it. Dr. Radler went public due to pressure to rush the technique to market, given the dramatic rise in malarial cases in southeast Asia, which were caused by a heavy mosquito infestation. Heavy rains were to blame for the insect population’s explosion.
2020
• Dr. Xu Xiang, head of Infectious Disease Research at the largest hospital in Chengdu, China, informs the World Health Organization (WHO) that an “adapted” microvirus, being used in an experimental drug trial in Cambodia, has mutated. Dr. Radler goes into hiding.
Apocalypse: Still Possible, and a few years ahead of schedule. So far, nothing in my timeline is falling out. This predicting an apocalypse thing might be too easy. Of course, in my timeline the drug was tested in Cambodia, not Comoros. Africa came later.
This Blog Intentionally Blank 
Holy shit. I work in the biotech industry and this is as unethical as it gets. What the fuck? I mean, I get that malaria is a HUGE problem, killing millions a year (take that, Ebola) and we must find a cure. But wow.
Unless I’m reading incorrectly, it doesn’t appear that WHO knew about it either, until after the fact. Holy shit.
That’s what scared me. My “wild” prediction was that people became so desperate they began going around all the normal controls put in place. Imagine my surprise when it started happening.
Holy shit is right.
Have you read World War Z? Forget the Brad Pitt movie, I’m talking about the book. The Zombies come from China.
I haven’t read it. I should check it out.
Apocalypses happen all the time, and all throughout history. They just get branded differently, and tend only to affect select individuals over a short period of time. Short if you think in evolutionary scales. No apocalypses happening to me, not on my watch, not this lifetime.
I’ve made a few predictions of my own which are now coming to pass. So, all will be just fine.
We tend to be drawn to the idea of humanity-ending change, but that would really take a cataclysmic event. I think we’re far more likely to see these relatively minor sea changes that, in a couple of generations, shifts the culture so profoundly that none can remember how it was before.
Possibly so. They happen with enough frequency throughout history. Both plague epidemics are a case in point, amongst others. WW1 was apocalyptic too. It fundamentally changed the world.