Not just like Covid. By this time everyone had seen the videos from China, there were Cruise liners parked all over the world under quarantine, international air travel was being slowed and stifled and the first 'confirmed' case in the US was reported in Washington.

So if the play is pandemic they are quite a bit behind on the timeline.

Actually, disease X dates back to 2018, and was mentioned by WHO:

https://web.archive.org/web/20200301083134/http://origin.who.int/blueprint/priority-diseases/en/

The second annual review occurred 6-7 February, 2018. Experts consider that given their potential to cause a public health emergency and the absence of efficacious drugs and/or vaccines, there is an urgent need for accelerated research and development for*:

• Crimean-Congo haemorrhagic fever (CCHF)
• Ebola virus disease and Marburg virus disease
• Lassa fever
• Middle East respiratory syndrome coronavirus (MERS-CoV) and Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS)
• Nipah and henipaviral diseases
• Rift Valley fever (RVF)
• Zika
• Disease X

Disease X represents the knowledge that a serious international epidemic could be caused by a pathogen currently unknown to cause human disease, and so the R&D; Blueprint explicitly seeks to enable cross-cutting R&D; preparedness that is also relevant for an unknown “Disease X” as far as possible.