Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates, who predicted the COVID-19 outbreak in 2015, has warned over the emergence of more pandemics in the future.
Gates made clear seven years ago that governments were not prepared for a pandemic and his remarks proved to be right following the emergence of the coronavirus.
“If anything kills over 10 million people in the next few decades, it’s most likely to be a highly infectious virus rather than a war,” Gates said during a Ted Talk back in 2015.
“We’ve actually invested very little in a system to stop an epidemic. We’re not ready for the next epidemic.”
Gates asks governments to invest in prevent pandemics
Gates has urged governments to spend billions to prevent the spread of future diseases and pandemics which according to him could be far more deadly than COVID-19.
“As the world responds to the challenge of a rapidly evolving virus, the need to deliver new, lifesaving tools has never been more urgent,” Gates said last week.
Bill Gates warns of pandemics potentially far worse than Covid https://t.co/hGqtBdElbj
— Financial Times (@FinancialTimes) January 20, 2022
Our work over the past 20 years has taught us that early investment in research and development can save lives and prevent worst-case scenarios. Five years ago, following the Ebola and Zika epidemics, our foundation helped launch CEPI.
“Today, we’re increasing our commitment and pledging an additional 150 million dollars to help CEPI accelerate the development of safe and effective vaccines against emerging variants of the coronavirus and to prepare for, and possibly even prevent, the next pandemic.”
The next two threats to humanity
In an interview for Derek Muller’s YouTube channel Veritasium last February, Gates was asked what’s the next issues that humanity is facing.
“One is climate change,” replied Gates. “Every year that would be a death toll even greater than the one we would have in this pandemic.
“Also, related to pandemics is something people don’t like to talk about much, which is bioterrorism, that somebody who wants to cause damage could engineer a virus. So that means the chance of running into this is more than just the naturally caused epidemics like the current one.”
