How Bill Gates warned in 2015 of a highly infectious virus for which “we are not ready”

In April 2015, Bill Gates began his speech by resuming their childhood fears, saying: “The catastrophe that worried us was nuclear war”, to start preparing for this danger by storing boxes of nutrients and water in barrels and dropping them in the basement. Here, the comparison begins, explaining that the catastrophe that will kill more than 10 million people in the decades to come will not be a nuclear explosion or a war, but rather a highly contagious virus, not missiles but microbes, and it says, “We are not prepared for the next epidemic,” recalling the spread of Ebola.

Among the reasons why Bill Gates saw a contribution to the fight against Ebola, first of all the nature of the virus which is not transmissible in the air, and also that it did not reach the urban areas, which ‘He considered only luck related, when he said: “If he had reached the cities, the number of victims would have been much greater.” He completes his hypothesis, assuming a future scenario of an individual infected with a contagious virus but does not experience any chronic symptoms.

It’s a state of war ..

While explaining, Gates presented a simulation of the Institute for Disease Modeling, which revealed that the emergence of a new type of flu like the one that killed 50 million people in 1918 could now kill 30 million people. in six months, and the disease that would surprise us in the future was one that we ignore.

Gates draws attention to a very important observation when he says: “If you tell your governments now that there is a threat of weapons that would kill 30 million people, there will be a sense of urgency to come prepare for the threat, but in the case of biological threats, that sense of urgency does not exist, “she said, noting that the world must prepare for epidemics as it prepares for war.

He noted that if countries organize exercises known as “war games” to prepare for future military conflicts, they should also organize simulations known as “germ games” to be better prepared. generalized diseases.

Gates warned: “We have invested heavily in nuclear deterrence, but we have invested very little in a system to stop epidemics. We are not ready for the next epidemic ”.

In his conference, Gates called for strengthening health systems in poor countries and integrating medical personnel into the military to enable faster deployment of teams to deal with pandemics.

Last year, Mr. Gates, who since stepping down as CEO of Microsoft has devoted his energy to helping eradicate disease in the developing world, also warned of an impending pandemic.

In a 2019 Netflix documentary, Gates predicted that a deadly virus could come from China’s wet markets and quickly infect the world.

In the series released late last year, Gates warned of the likelihood of a virus breaking out in one of China’s wet markets – just like Wuhan’s, where this new coronavirus epidemic would have arisen.

In the episode titled The Next Pandemic, the producers of the documentary head to a wet market in Lianghua, China, where the animals are killed and the resulting meat sold in the same place.

This, the documentary explains, makes wet markets an “X disease factory” because the different corpses of animals are piled on top of each other, blood and meat mixing, before being transmitted from human to human. man.

Meanwhile, their viruses mix and mutate, which increases the chances of being found in humans, ”says the documentary.

In this episode, Gates also warned that the world was ill-prepared to deal with the implications of the viral spread of disease while the remedies were often years away.

He said if nothing was done to better prepare for pandemics, the time would come when the world would look back and wish it had invested more in potential vaccines.

If you think of anything that could kill millions of people, a pandemic is our greatest risk, ”he said.

Scientists who have studied the current coronavirus epidemic believe it originated from snakes and bats – animals that were sold alive at the Wuhan Seafood Market before being killed and eaten.

Previous pandemics also started in China, as did the SARS epidemic that came from bats and civets.

And as the World Health Organization classifies the latest epidemic of coronavirus as a global health emergency, the race is on to find a vaccine.

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