An old video went viral again in a social media post featuring Bill Gates who alledgely predicted the COVID-19 outbreak as early as 2015 in TED Talk.
The Microsoft founder, Bill Gates, and a global philanthropist talk about how should people prepare for a massive biological attack in his interview in TED Talk entitled "The next outbreak? We're not ready."
Gates noticed that after the 2014 Ebola outbreak, the preparation was unacceptable. He proposed ways that could help improve their strategy against it.
Gates said, "The failure to prepare could allow the next epidemic to be dramatically more devastating than Ebola,"
Comparing Ebola to other viruses, it didn't spread through the air and that people were bedridden when they were infected. He also stated that a future threat or disease could be airborne that spreads fast.
People are more prepared now than it was for the influenza pandemic in 1918. He added that the world should also prepare for another outbreak same way as how it would plan for war.
He said that there would be in need of many medical facilities, and testing methods. There is also a need of innovative work, and better foundation in the area of underdeveloped locales of the world, where such a pathogen would almost certainly break out.
Gates stated that it is not an outbreak on the scale of a pandemic but it's a potential epidemic. He doesn't specifically call out the coronavirus a future pathogen, but only as a deadly virus.
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Coronavirus and what Bill Gates said
The coronavirus originated from Wuhan, the capital of Hubei province in China. The city has 11 million people and is a major manufacturing hub. Yet, that might be one of the handful of aspects of the pandemic that Gates didn't correctly predict.
Gates stated that based on the preparation and reaction on the current coronavirus spread, even the U.S. lacks provisions.
There's an analysis of the way in which the Trump organization has taken care of the reaction to the coronavirus pandemic.
The medical organization is stressed over the lack of medical supplies needed to secure themselves while treating patients. The White House recognized this inventory shortage concern and said it should be taken care of immediately.
According to studies and analysis from USA Today, they found that U.S. will not have enough medical supplies to handle the coronavirus pandemic.
Testing kits for the coronavirus remain limited even as they work to increase the capacity. Researchers and scientists around the world are trying to develop and experiment vaccines for the coronavirus and said that the vaccine would not be ready for 12 to 18 months.
During Gates' TED Talk in 2015, he doesn't call out the coronavirus, however, he predicted the effects of a potential epidemic and planned preparation for the worst.
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