Bill Gates warns of “threat of next pandemic”



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Microsoft mogul and co-founder Bill Gates explained an ambitious plan to stop the next pandemic. “It should be taken as seriously as a threat of war,” he says.

Through the annual letter from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the philanthropist calls for billions of dollars in investment to develop a global warning system.

“The unfortunate reality is that COVID-19 may not be the last pandemic. We don’t know when the next one will arrive, or if it will be a flu, a coronavirus or some new disease that we have never seen before, ”says the businessman.

The idea is that humanity has a way to identify emerging germs and thus develop the ability to respond quickly.

«The world was not prepared for the Covid-19 pandemic. I think next time it will be different, ”he wrote.

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Details of the plan

Gates too he calls for massive tests and a cadre of 3,000 “lifeguards” ready to go into action.

For the billionaire, while the cost may seem high, billions spent on infrastructure and technology would be a huge savings compared to the global cost by the effects of COVID-19, about 28 trillion dollars.

“We cannot allow ourselves to be caught off guard again,” Gates added.

To do this, Bill Gates says that rich countries must now double spending on research and development.

Work in “mega-diagnostic” test platforms would be key, because it would allow the detection of an unusual disease on a large scale and thus act.

“Speed ​​matters in a pandemic,” Gates says. “The faster you act, the faster you will cut off the exponential growth of the virus.”

If Gates says so …

The businessman has been warning of the dangers of a pandemic for several years. Even a TED talk from 2015 went viral that looked like a prediction of what would happen in 2020.

The Bill Gates Foundation has invested 1.75 billion in the fight against the new coronavirus COVID-19 and has directed a large part of its staff to projects related to the pandemic.

Funding has helped support research on promising vaccines and treatments called monoclonal antibodies.

“Just as World War II was the defining event for our parents’ generation, the coronavirus pandemic that we are experiencing right now will define ours,” is one of the conclusions of Bill and Melinda Gates.

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