Bill Gates Warned Us About Coronavirus
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Bill Gates Warned Us About Coronavirus – But We Chose To Ignore

Bill Gates knew years ago that an epidemic like coronavirus is coming and the world is not prepared for that.

The co-founder of Microsoft Corporations on his TED talk in 2015, five years ago, warned the world about an outbreak and how we are not ready for it.

He reminded then that the greatest risk of a global catastrophe that would kill more than 10 million people in the next decades is not a nuclear war, but a highly infectious virus.

“Not missiles, but microbes”, he said.

The world invested a huge amount in nuclear deterrents and very little to stop an epidemic.

What Bill Gates told Five years ago remains the same even now. “We’re not ready for the next epidemic”.

He warned that the failure in preparedness would allow the next epidemic to be more devastating than Ebola. And we are witnessing that now in 2020.

According to Bill Gates, there were three reasons why Ebola did not spread much and affected only three West African countries. First is the great work by health workers, they found the infected and prevented the disease from spreading. The

second was the nature of the disease, it did not spread through the air and by the time it is contagious, most of the infected were bedridden which limited their contact with others. The third was that the disease did not reach urban areas.

But we might not be so lucky next time. The infected may feel well enough even when they are contagious, that they might take a flight or visit a market, he said.

According to him, to prepare ourselves for the next epidemic, we need strong health systems in poor countries, we need medical reserve corps and pair them with the military to take advantage of their ability to move fast and do logistics. Finally, we need simulations and lots of advanced R&D in areas of vaccines and diagnostics.

The World Bank estimated years ago that if we have a worldwide flu epidemic, the global wealth will go down by over three trillion dollars and we’d have millions and millions of deaths.

Later in 2017, Bill gates repeated the same in an event in Davos. “It’s pretty surprising how little preparedness there is for it,” he said.

Speaking at the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) annual meeting in Seattle last month, Gates said the impact of COVID-19 could be “very, very dramatic,” particularly if it spreads to areas like sub-Saharan Africa and Southern Asia.

It is upsetting that despite the warnings from eminent personalities like Bill Gates, the world failed to prepare for an epidemic like the Covid-19. Our ignorance of their words led us to the current situation where hundreds of people die of Covid-19 every day, where the world population is forced to lock themselves down at their homes, causing an economic slowdown.

Like Bill Gates Said in 2015 about Ebola, let’s consider this as an early warning, a wake-up call to get ready for the next epidemic that could be far more devastating than Covid-19.

Editor’s Note; Bill Gates Warned Us About Coronavirus, Warned about an epidemic in 2015, TED talks