In one of his Ted talks, Bill Gates mentioned that when he was a kid, the disaster he was worried about most was the Nuclear War. There used to be a huge barrel below his building filled with food and water.
In the video he says that today the global catastrophe looks a little different. It looks like this.
Gates continues saying that 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. Not missiles, but microbes. Gates feels that a part of the reason for this is probably because mankind has invested very little in a system to stop an epidemic. Which is why we are not ready for the next epidemic.
In his talk, the Microsoft co-founder stressed on the Ebola times. When carefully analysed, the problem wasn’t that there was a system that didn’t work well enough, but the core problem was there wasn’t a system in the first place.
Bill Gates stated that the systems placed by the world are much slower than expected and that it had cost many lives. Gates even talked about the WHO funds that the epidemiologists, to monitor such problems, yet the actual fieldwork is not permitted.
It was also Bill’s prediction that the next outbreak would be even more devastating than Ebola. He said this citing the fact that Ebola didn’t reach many urban cities, or else the results would have been greater.
Much later Gates spoke about how the world can prepare itself for another epidemic. He enlisted a few points for the world to tackle an epidemic.
- Strong Health Systems
- Medical Reserve Corps
- Pair Medical & Military
- Simulations (Run Germ Games)
- Step Up Research and Development
Gates ended his talk while mentioning about the upcoming epidemic. As of now, Coronavirus has been declared as a pandemic by the World Health Organisation (WHO). People have been affected by the Coronavirus in massive numbers, seems that Bill Gates’ prediction that the world is not ready for another epidemic is going to be true.
You can watch Bill Gates’ whole video here.