Mr Gates offered up some “bad news” for those feeling optimistic over the arrival of a vaccine in the US and other countries.
In a CNN interview on Sunday, Bill Gates, the co-founder of Microsoft, offered up some “bad news” for those feeling optimistic over the arrival of a vaccine in the US and other countries.
“I thought the U.S. would do a better job handling it,” Mr Gates explained to CNN host Jake Tapper. “This virus could be more fatal than it is. We didn’t get the worst-case. But the thing that has surprised me is that the economic impact in the U.S. and around the world has been much greater than the forecasts that I made five years ago.”
“Sadly, the next four to six months could be the worst of the pandemic. The IHME (Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation) forecast shows over 200,000 additional deaths. If we would follow the rules, in terms of wearing masks and not mixing, we could avoid a large percentage of those deaths,” the co-chair of Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation said.
He also said that we can expect the world to start its long-awaited return to normalcy as early as the summer of 2021, with a few caveats.
“Even through early 2022, unless we help other countries get rid of this disease and we get high vaccinations rates in our country, the risk of reintroduction will be there,” Mr Gates said. “And, of course, the global economy will be slowed down, which hurts America’s economy in a pretty dramatic way. “
According to Johns Hopkins University, nearly 300,000 people in the U.S. have died from COVID-19.
“Overall, when I did the forecasts in 2015, I talked about the deaths potentially being higher. So, this virus could be more fatal than it is. We didn’t get the worst-case. But the thing that has surprised me is that the economic impact in the US and around the world has been much greater than the forecasts that I made five years ago,” the Microsoft co-founder said.
His foundation had been funding a lot of the research for the vaccines, Mr Gates added.
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