Did Bill Gates warn us about the coronavirus outbreak in 2015?
Bill Gates delivered a TED Talk in 2015 warning the world about an upcoming global pandemic. Was he referring to the coronavirus?
The Ebola epidemic swept through West Africa in 2015 and the world was not prepared. Bill Gates held a TED Talk urging the world to be better prepared for another virus that would potentially be more dangerous.
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His words are resonating today as we currently face the novel coronavirus pandemic.
“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,” Gates said in his talk. “But we've actually invested very little in a system to stop an epidemic. We're not ready for the next epidemic.”
“The failure to prepare could allow the next epidemic to be dramatically more devastating than Ebola,” which affected primarily Sierra Leone, Guinea, and Liberia, Gates stated.
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Gates shared more info regarding the kind of virus this would be, even saying that we might not be so lucky next time.
“Next time, we might not be so lucky,” he said. “You can have a virus where people feel well enough while they're infectious that they get on a plane or they go to a market.”
The novel coronavirus (COVID-19) has also been detected in a number of areas around the globe. The scenario Bill Gates described about asymptomatic people unwittingly spreading the disease in crowded areas is what's happening in the world currently.