Some of the measures of preparedness that Gates said the world requires include a strong healthcare system in poor countries, a reserve medical corps, a system to pair medical personnel with the military, germ games, and lots of advanced R&D.Īnd as far as the money involved, he said it couldn’t be close to what such a situation would cost humanity. These lessons learnt from history are reason why we need to prepare for an epidemic just as we do for wars.
To further explain how deadly this could be, Gates took his audience back to 1918, citing the example of the Spanish flu, the deadliest in human history, as a virus that could spread through the air. In an almost Nostradamus-like statement, Gates went on to add that the next virus might be such that “people feel well enough while they are infectious that they get on a plane or they go to a market.” A description that bears a stark similarity to the Covid-19. “The failure to prepare could allow the next epidemic to be dramatically more devastating than Ebola,” he emphasised on the urgent need to act, five years before the novel coronavirus became a reality. He also goes on to add: “We are not ready for the next epidemic.”Ĭiting Ebola as an example, one of the world’s richest men said that the problem wasn't that there was a system that didn't work, the problem was that there was no system at all. Gates said that part of the reason for this shift was because “we've invested highly in nuclear deterrents, but we've invested very little in a system to stop an epidemic.” “If anything kills over 10 million people in the next few decades it's highly likely to be a highly-infectious virus rather than a war. However, in the years since, Gates said that the greatest risk of a global catastrophe doesn't look like that anymore.
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