Bill Gates is back with some more bad news about the Covid pandemic

Just in case you were feeling pretty good about getting back to normal after the last two years, Bill Gates has some news for you.

The former world’s richest man and somewhat expert on global pandemics says that Covid-19 is far from over.

How to prevent the next pandemic according to Bill Gates

The Microsoft co-founder’s new book details a number of ways in which we can stop another Covid-like pandemic from infecting the world.

Some of the steps he mentions include:

• ‘Create a library of antiviral compounds that are designed to attack common respiratory viruses.’
• ‘Expand incentives for generics manufacturers to create low-cost versions of new drugs.’
• ‘We also need to support work on new types of tests that make it easier to collect samples and turn around results quickly, like better versions of the rapid antigen tests that many of us now take at home for Covid.
• ‘Creating the GERM—Global Epidemic Response and Mobilization—team is one of the most important steps we can take to stop the next pandemic.’
• ‘The models for wealthy countries are still Sweden and Norway, who each give at least 0.7 of their GDP in aid. If we’re going to be serious about preventing the next pandemic, we need to not just go back to pre-COVID aid levels but increase investments in strengthening health systems.’

According to Gates, the planet needs to urgenty develop long-lasting vaccines to block infection.

He also recommends the creation of two teams, the first to identify threats and the second to respond to them. His idea of a global epidemic response team would be managed by the World Health Organisation and benefit from the extra investment.

‘It seems wild to me that we could fail to look at this tragedy and not, on behalf of the citizens of the world, make these investments,’; he said.

What did Bill Gates say about pandemics in 2015?

Addressing a TED Talk five years ago, Gates, 64, warned the next ‘global catastrophe’ would not be caused by war, but by a virus.

He said: ‘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.’

‘Part of the reason for this is we have invested a huge amount in nuclear deterrents, but we’ve actually invested very little in a system to stop an epidemic.

‘We’re not ready for the next epidemic.’

Citing the Ebola outbreak, he highlighted how the world was ‘far slower than we should have been’ due to the lack of personnel and epidemiologists ready to go, describing it as a ‘global failure.’

In a 2017 op-ed for Business Insider, Gates reinforced this message, saying a fast-moving airborne pathogen could kill tens of millions of people in a worst-case scenario.

‘Whether it occurs by a quirk of nature or at the hand of a terrorist, epidemiologists say a fast-moving airborne pathogen could kill more than 30 million people in less than a year, he wrote.

‘And they say there is a reasonable probability the world will experience such an outbreak in the next 10-15 years.’

Bill Gates pointed out that, had Covid 19 not come along, his TED talk would have been a pretty obscure one.

As it is, the talk has been viewed more than 43 million times.

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