Since the widespread COVID-19 pandemic in almost the entire world, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), together with the health officials, has continued grappling with the outbreak that has killed more than 14,000 people and infected over 300,000 worldwide. And, about a couple of years ago, two years, to be exact, billionaire Bill Gates had given a warning that the world was unprepared for pandemics and this, he said, "should concern" everyone.
Speaking before an audience in April 2018, via an event which the New Journal of Medicine (NEJM) and the Massachusetts Medical Society hosted, Gates expressed what he believed, saying, the world needed to be prepared for pandemics in the similar serious manner it usually "prepares for war."
This preparation, the Microsoft co-founder also said, such preparation needed "staging simulations, preparedness exercises and war games" so everyone could better understand the manner diseases would spread. Being prepared, Gates added, would help everyone deal with responses like communications and quarantine to mitigate panic.
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Gates' Warning Based Swine Flu and Ebola Virus
At the time when Gates gave the speech, coronavirus wasn't yet categorized as a pandemic disease. Pandemics, as to how medical experts explain, take place "when epidemics spread between nations." And, even though this infectious disease was not considered a pandemic then, the spread of similar viruses was (and always is) a serious concern.
Notably, Gates said that while the H1N1 influenza (also known as the swine flu) outbreak in 2009 was not as fatal as people feared at first, it indeed, called attention to the fact the whole world did not have a coordinated method to contribute to the early detection and eventually, the spread of pandemics.
Moreover, the co-founder and co-chairman of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation also said in his speech that, four years ago, "the Ebola epidemic in West Africa was another wakeup call" since the number of confirmed cases rose, the health systems shrunk and death rates mounted.
Again, the world then, he added, was so slow to respond to the 2014 to 2015 epidemic which infected over 28,000 and killed 11,000 people. Relatively, according to the CDC, 11 people got cured for the Ebola virus in the United States during the epidemic.
Global Pandemics as a New Kind of 'Military Weapon'
Also in his 2018 speech, the company executive also made a comparison between the deadly worldwide pandemics (which now includes COVID-19), to a new kind of 'military weapon.'
Recalling the Munich Security Conference in 2017 when and where he also gave a speech, Gates said he asked the world leaders "to imagine that somewhere in the world, a new weapon could emerge or exist" and that weapon could kill millions of people that could lead to bringing the world economy to a standstill, and casting countries into chaos.
If the global pandemics, said Gates during the NEJM event, "were a military weapon," the ideal response should be, to do everything possible for the development of countermeasures.
He added that there was a lack of urgency when it comes to biologic dangers and this should concern everyone because history has taught everyone that "another deadly global pandemic" was about to come. At that time, Gates said no one could predict when this global pandemic that was about to come, was going to happen.
However, he continued, given the frequent or repeated appearance of new pathogens, the rising danger of a bioterror attack, and the world's constantly increasing connectedness, there is a considerable possibility that a lethal and large modern-day pandemic would happen in this lifetime. And now, it has happened, the lethal pandemic is real in COVID-19.
