Bill Gates, the co-founder of Microsoft, believes that the U.S is acting too slowly and missed its opportunity to avoid mandatory quarantine orders to deal with the coronavirus crisis. Gates said that immediately once the first cases were detected in Washington state in January, “everybody should have taken notice.”
Gates spoke with Chris Anderson of TED, a non-profit organization that hosts talks about inspiring, educational, or intelligent topics, in a video discussion about the COVID-19 situation. “There’s the period between where we realized it was transmitting and now where we should’ve done more,” said Gates.
Gates explained:
It’s very tough to say to people, ‘Hey keep going to restaurants, go buy new houses, ignore that pile of bodies over in the corner, we want you to keep spending because there’s some politician that thinks GDP growth is what counts. It’s hard to tell people during an epidemic that they should go about things knowing their activity is spreading this disease.
It is catastrophic for the economy. However, like ripping off a band-aid, “the sooner you do it in a tough way, the sooner you can undo it and go back to normal,” added Gates.
On March 24th, President Trump said that he wants to quickly reassess shutdowns across the nation to lessen the economic impact. In Gates’ talk with Anderson, he acknowledged that the economy would suffer but believes that “there really is no middle ground.” Gates suggested that we keep a mandatory shutdown of at least six to 10 weeks across the country.
When Gates was asked his thought on the idea of reopening the economy, he said:
It is very irresponsible for somebody to suggest we can have the best of both worlds. What we need is an extreme shutdown. If things go well, then you can start opening back up.
The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation has already pledged $100 million to fight COVID-19 worldwide. The foundation is also donating $5 million to help Washington state officials deal with the pandemic and has partnered with Amazon to deliver at-home coronavirus testing kits to residents in Seattle. Gates is also spending billions of dollars to construct 7 new coronavirus vaccine factories.
Gates warned that the U.S needs to navigate better and accelerate coronavirus testing. “We can figure out which antiviral drugs work within two or three weeks and get those scaled up, and we can make the vaccine if we’re really ready probably in six months,” Gates explained.
In a 2015 Ted Talk, Gates foreshadowed something similar to this COVID-19, which has now infected (confirmed cases) more than 1.3 million worldwide and killed 74,554, as of April 6. In the Ted Talk titled “The next outbreak? We’re not ready,” he started by saying, “if anything kills over 10 million people in the next few decades, its most likely to be a highly infectious virus, rather than a war; not missiles but microbes.”
