While several people are hell-bent on devising conspiracy theories on the COVID-19 outbreak that has been declared a pandemic by the WHO, netizens are divided on this issue. Some claim the conspiracy around China, which wants to become a superpower by making its centuries-old rival, the US, weak. Moreover, US President Donald Trump, again and again, called coronavirus “Chinese Virus” in many of his addresses.
On the contrary, China is claiming the virus to be a US conspiracy to create chaos and confusion in China. Some bizarre news has been doing rounds, wherein a section of people are saying that the virus is a conspiracy of rich people including Bill Gates. They say so because the said gentleman once predicted the pandemic would take place in future. Now, a lot of questions arise: Why did Gates predict a pandemic that early? Was he aware of it? Did Bill Gates state its preventive measures?
Bill Gates, one of the richest people in the world, in 2015 predicted a pandemic in the future. On a TED Talk, Bill Gates had warned: “The world is simply not prepared to deal with a disease — an especially virulent flu, for example — that infects large numbers of people very quickly. Of all the things that could kill 10 million people or more, by far the most likely is an epidemic.”
Further, he explained that, “Part of the reason is we have invested a huge amount in nuclear deterrents, but we’ve actually invested very little in a system to stop an epidemic.” Back in 2015, this was his reaction to the Ebola virus that Africa was a victim to, and had taken the lives of thousands of people.
Gates explained why Ebola did not spread further. Ebola did not spread through air, and by the time most people were contagious, they were usually already bedridden. Additionally, the virus did not get into many urban areas during this particular outbreak, which would have otherwise made the virus spread faster.
He said that the containment was due to “a lot of heroic work by the health workers. They found the people and they prevented more infections.” This happened despite the fact there weren’t a large number of epidemiologists or medical teams “ready to go” to look at diagnostics and treatment approaches. He continued, “Next time, we might not be so lucky. 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.”
Talking about its prevention, Gates said that we should build a good response system using technology such as cell phones to disseminate information to masses quickly. Moreover, he suggested that strong health systems should be established in poor countries. There should be medical reserve corps, with lots of trained people and experts ready to deploy. Also pairing the medical and military experts would ensure that the latter can provide logistics and secure areas. Simulations, or “germ games”, can be performed to see how well leaders are prepared. We should have lots of advanced research and development in areas of vaccines and diagnostics.