Bill Gates has called the COVID-19 pandemic a 'nightmare scenario' but said fewer Americans will die than the 240,000 that modelin...
Bill Gates has called the COVID-19 pandemic a 'nightmare scenario' but said fewer Americans will die than the 240,000 that modeling predicts, if the government is smarter about who and how they test.
Gates – the founder of Microsoft – predicted in a TED talk five years ago that 'microbes not missiles' would be more likely to kill millions of people around the world.
Now he has pushed a nationwide shutdown, limited domestic travel and administering more targeted testing to stop the overflow of patients at hospitals unable to cope with the surge in numbers.
'Well, if we do the social distancing properly, we should be able to get out of this with the death number well short of that,' Gates told Fox News Sunday.
Bill Gates admitted on Fox News Sunday: 'This is a nightmare scenario because human-to-human transmittal respiratory viruses can grow exponentially'
Pictured are the number of coronavirus cases and deaths in the US since January up until now
'This is a nightmare scenario because human-to-human transmittal respiratory viruses can grow exponentially. And you know, if we had kept on going to work, traveling like we were, you know, that curve would never bend until you had the majority of the people infected and then a massive number seeking hospital care and lots of lots of deaths.'
The US is predicted to see its worst day in the coronavirus outbreak in 11 days when more than 2,000 people are expected to die.
Gates believes that by obtaining test results within 24 hours, the US will be able to quickly identify those an infected person has come into contact with so they can be isolated and slow the spread.
While there are strict international travel restrictions, Gates focused on the importance of domestic boundaries too.
'Well, when you have finite resources you need to allocate them to where there's the most need,' Gates told host Chris Wallace. 'Certainly because people move around the country, we have to have the shutdown or else you'll have exponential growth. It will spread back into other parts of the country.'
The outbreak was identified in Wuhan, China in November with the first case in the US January. As early as February, before any lockdowns, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation donated $10million to help fight the virus.
President Donald Trump stands in front of a chart labeled Goals of Community Mitigation showing projected deaths in the United States after exposure to coronavirus as 100,000 - 240,000. Pictured during the daily coronavirus response briefing at the White House in Washington on March 31
Bill Gates said: 'If we do the social distancing properly, we should be able to get out of this with the death number well short of that'
Gates has criticized the government's delay in taking precautions and serious action after the outbreak.
'Between 2015 and 2020, less than 5 percent of what should have been done was done,' Gates said.
During the interview from Microsoft's Skype service, Gates admitted that he wakes up every morning thinking the pandemic is only the subject of his nightmares.
But he said compared to a disease like small pox, COVID-19 'isn't the worst case'.
'The one percent mortality rate when your system is not overloaded… if that was small pox that would be 30 percent,' he explained.
'So this is super, super bad, but we will eventually get a vaccine. Even before then, if we do the right things we'll be able to open up significant parts of the economy,' he said.
'Once you're in the crisis you're doing your best to deal with this.'
He added: 'I'm sure you know, once we get past this, we'll look back, understand what we could have done differently, and make sure that we're not letting it happen again, particularly because it could be even worse in terms of the fatality rate.'
Gates is pictured in a 2015 TED talk where he warned about 'microbes' being the enemy in the next pandemic. 'Between 2015 and 2020, less than 5 percent of what should have been done was done,' Gates said Sunday
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