Image by Kuhlmann /MSC/Victor Tangermann
In a chat with Derek Mullers popular YouTube channel Veritasium, Microsoft co-founder and philanthropist Bill Gates said that the world is facing two big threats: climate change and bioterrorism.
Gates predicted that investing very little in a system to stop an epidemic would end in disaster during a 2015 TED Talk, almost five years before the current coronavirus pandemic. If anything kills over 10 million people in the next few decades, its most likely to be a highly infectious virus rather than a war, Gates said at the time.
He turned out to be correct. So far, the coronavirus has claimed over two million lives globally.
The next outbreak could be even worse,he says and it could come from a source intentionally trying to seed disaster.
Also related to pandemics is something people dont like to talk about much, which is bioterrorism, that somebody who wants to cause damage could engineer a virus, Gates said during his interview on the Veritasium channel.
So that means the chance of running into this is more than just the naturally caused epidemics like the current one, he added.
But that doesnt mean we cant prepare ourselves for the next pandemic. Death tolls could be greatly reduced substantially, Gates argued, if we invest in research and increase testing capabilities.
We dont know when the next one will strike, or whether it will be a flu, a coronavirus, or some new disease weve never seen before, Gates wrote in his annual Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation letter late last month.
But what we do know is that we cant afford to be caught flat-footed again, he wrote. The threat of the next pandemic will always be hanging over our heads unless the world takes steps to prevent it.
Its unusual for Gates to call out bioterrorism as a threat specifically. As he points out himself, its a taboo subject [good phrasing] that gets little mainstream attention.
The issue has been highly politicized during the ongoing coronavirus pandemic, with world leadersincluding former US president Donald Trump spreading conspiracy theories that COVID was engineered in a lab.
In reality, theres been plenty of evidence that it wasnt. Most recently, a team send by the World Health Organization to China to find the source of the virus earlier this month concluded that it was extremely unlikely that the virus escaped from a lab in Wuhan, China.
But that doesnt mean the next pandemic wont be caused by a bad actor, Gates argued. In fact, the looming threat of an intentionally caused epidemic should only reinforce our commitments to prepare for the next big threat.
Read more:
Bill Gates Says the Next Horrible Virus Could Be Engineered by Terrorists - Futurism
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