World billionaire Bill Gates has voiced his opinion on COVID-19 and future
pandemics in a recent interview.
Citing Business Insider, speaking to CNBC at Germany's annual Munich
Security Conference on Friday, he said the danger of experiencing severe
illness from COVID-19 had been reduced dramatically.
"The likelihood of severe disease, which is primarily associated with
advancing age and having obesity or diabetes, that risk is now dramatically
reduced because of exposure to those infections," he said.
He added, however, that he believed the world would experience another
pandemic.
"We will have another pandemic. It will be a different pathogen another
time," Gates told CNBC.
But the Microsoft co-founder said he thinks that if there was a rational
response then we would have tackled it earlier so it wouldn't have gone
global as it is this time.
On whether it's possible to prevent another pandemic altogether, Gates told
CNBC's Hadley Gamble: "If every country did what Australia did, then you
wouldn't call it a pandemic.
Meanwhile, launching The Hill, Gates explained that there are two solutions
to deal with the next pandemic if the world learns from the fight against
the new corona virus.
"One of them is to ensure the limited supply (of vaccines) is allocated in a
more rational way," he said.
"The second is to have so much capacity that you can supply the entire human
race with two doses in a very short time," he added.
Gates called on the world to invest now by preparing for future pandemics.
He added that making enough vaccines for the world "should be our
aspiration."
Gates has become a leading figure in the fight against COVID-19 by pledging
billions of dollars in response efforts.
Before COVID-19 emerged, he predicted the world would suffer a pandemic,
along with leading disease and flu experts.
In a 2015 TED talk, Gates said the world "is not ready for the next
epidemic."
This month, the billionaire announced that his new book would explore his
views on how to prevent the next pandemic.
It will also discuss how he became the subject of online conspiracy
theorists, who claim he exploited vaccines to implant microchips in humans.