Described as a 'placeholder name' – nobody seems to know what the origins, epidemiology, or any other defining characteristics of this disease will be, other than the people promoting this idea suggesting that it is likely cause 20% more fatalities than the Covid-19 pandemic.  In a session titled: 'Preparing for Disease X', chair Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus led a panel discussion on 'novel efforts needed to prepare healthcare systems for the multiple challenges ahead if we are to be prepared for a much more deadly pandemic'.

The current debate on 'Disease X' crystalises perhaps the biggest accusation that has been made against orthodox science during these times – the use of 'scientism' to promote both government policy and widespread changes to our society and to the ways in which we live.  This is a dangerous combination to be sure, the implications of which have been highlighted by Patrick M. Wood in his own take on scientism:

It is a fatal error to equate scientism with science.  True science explores the natural world using the time-tested scientific method of repeated experimentation and validation.  By comparison, scientism is a speculative, metaphysical, upside-down worldview about the nature of the universe and man's relation to it.  If left unchecked, scientism – as expressed through technocracy and transhumanism, will end with the abolition of man and the civilization that it has built (Wood, 2022: 3).

Hacker (2014) agrees with this definition, arguing that scientism is 'the attempt to extend the natural sciences beyond their proper sphere of explanatory competence, and the use of the methods of the natural sciences to explain phenomena that require other forms of explanation' Scientism: The New Orthodoxy eBook : Williams, Richard N., Robinson, Daniel N.: Amazon.co.uk: Kindle Store.