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Bill Gates Warns We Should Be Preparing for a Deadly Global Pandemic but the Trump Administration Is Blowing Him Off
19 July 2018
LONDON, ENGLAND - APRIL 18: American businessman and philanthropist Bill Gates makes a speech at the Malaria Summit at 8 Northumberland Avenue on April 18, 2018 in London, England. The Malaria Summit is being held today to urge Commonwealth leaders to commit to halve cases of malaria across the Commonwealth within the next five years with a target to 650,000 lives. (Photo by Jack Taylor/Getty Images)
With all the talk of President Trump’s nuclear button, deadly extreme weather and even humanoid robots taking over the world, it’s easy these days to imagine any number of doomsday scenarios that could wipe out the human race.
According to Microsoft-founder-turned-philanthropist Bill Gates, however, the most pressing threat is something much less dramatic but also highly plausible: A global pandemic akin to the 1918 influenza breakout, which could kill more than 30 million people in just six months.
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">In a late-April </span><a href="http://epidemics.events.nejm.org/#/main"><span style="font-weight: 400;">talk</span></a><span style="font-weight: 400;"> hosted by the Massachusetts Medical Society and the New England Journal of Medicine, Gates, whose </span><a href="https://www.gatesfoundation.org/"><span style="font-weight: 400;">Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation</span></a><span style="font-weight: 400;"> works to improve global health, said the U.S. is woefully underprepared for the “significant probability of a large and lethal modern-day pandemic occurring in our lifetimes.”</span></p><p><span style="font-weight: 400;">New pathogens are regularly introduced as human settlements encroach on rainforest and other animal habitats — Ebola, SARS, Zika, and H1N1, to name a few, </span><a href="https://www.ijidonline.com/article/S1201-9712(16)30161-8/abstract"><span style="font-weight: 400;">were either dormant or did not exist</span></a><span style="font-weight: 400;"> before the past two decades — and the increase in global travel, migration and commerce could allow them to spread quickly and efficiently. </span></p><p><div data-conversation-spotlight=""></div></p><p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Worse yet, the possibility exists for some diseases to be weaponized for biological warfare, or to be used in terrorist attacks.</span></p><p><span style="font-weight: 400;">“The next epidemic could originate on the computer screen of a terrorist intent on using genetic engineering to create a synthetic version of the smallpox virus...or a super contagious and deadly strain of the flu,” Gates </span><a href="https://gizmodo.com/bill-gates-warns-30-million-people-could-die-from-flu-p-1825615528"><span style="font-weight: 400;">warned</span></a><span style="font-weight: 400;"> in 2016.</span></p><p><span style="font-weight: 400;">The U.S. would need considerably more public-health resources to withstand an outbreak thousands of times more deadly than this past year’s flu epidemic, which forced overwhelmed hospitals to </span><a href="http://time.com/5107984/hospitals-handling-burden-flu-patients/"><span style="font-weight: 400;">pitch tents</span></a><span style="font-weight: 400;"> outside overflowing emergency rooms.</span></p><p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Vaccines can take time to research, develop and deploy, Gates pointed out in his </span><a href="http://epidemics.events.nejm.org/#/main"><span style="font-weight: 400;">speech</span></a><span style="font-weight: 400;">. </span><span style="font-weight: 400;">“So we need to invest in other approaches, like antiviral drugs and antibody therapies that can be stockpiled or rapidly manufactured to stop the spread of pandemic diseases or treat people who have been exposed.”</span></p><p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Worse yet, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is about to </span><a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/to-your-health/wp/2018/04/27/bill-gates-calls-on-u-s-to-lead-fight-against-a-pandemic-that-could-kill-millions/?noredirect=on&utm_term=.59f1fb412c38"><span style="font-weight: 400;">lose its emergency funding</span></a><span style="font-weight: 400;"> that was granted by Congress to fight the 2014 Ebola outbreak, and is being </span><a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/to-your-health/wp/2018/02/01/cdc-to-cut-by-80-percent-efforts-to-prevent-global-disease-outbreak/"><span style="font-weight: 400;">forced to downsize its epidemic-prevention activities</span></a><span style="font-weight: 400;"> in dozens of high-risk countries.</span></p><p></p><p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Gates </span><a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/to-your-health/wp/2018/04/27/bill-gates-calls-on-u-s-to-lead-fight-against-a-pandemic-that-could-kill-millions/?noredirect=on&utm_term=.59f1fb412c38"><span style="font-weight: 400;">told</span></a> <i><span style="font-weight: 400;">The Washington Post</span></i><span style="font-weight: 400;"> that he met with Trump to discuss his concerns about global health security but was referred to the National Security Council, whose Trump appointee, Republican activist John Bolton, has yet to meet with Gates. (“And likely doesn’t have much interest in what he has to say unless it involves bombing someone,” </span><a href="https://gizmodo.com/bill-gates-warns-30-million-people-could-die-from-flu-p-1825615528"><span style="font-weight: 400;">points out</span></a><span style="font-weight: 400;"> Gizmodo.)</span></p><p><span style="font-weight: 400;">To that end, Gates points out the U.S. should be preparing for a pandemic as if it were a legitimate threat to national security, since it could handily kill more people than even a nuclear attack.</span></p><p><span style="font-weight: 400;">"In the case of biological threats, that sense of urgency is lacking," he </span><a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/bill-gates-warns-the-next-pandemic-disease-is-coming-2018-4?utm_content=buffer2e4ae&utm_medium=social&utm_source=facebook.com&utm_campaign=buffer-bi"><span style="font-weight: 400;">said</span></a><span style="font-weight: 400;">. "The world needs to prepare for pandemics in the same serious way it prepares for war."</span></p>
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