Bill Gates has for years warned government leaders about a global pandemic, but the Microsoft co-founder feels as if his efforts weren't enough. The coronavirus crisis still caught the whole world off guard, which according to the philanthropist, is one of his biggest regrets.
"I feel terrible. The whole point of talking about it was that we could take action and minimize the damage," Gates said in an interview with the Wall Street Journal. "I wish I had done more to call attention to the danger."
Since 2014, Gates had been actively speaking about the threat of pandemic disease, referring to Ebola at the time. Because there was so little preparation, the world lost time in the current epidemic, trying to answer basic questions about combating Ebola. He then raised a point: in the next epidemic, such delays could result in a global disaster -- which is what we're exactly facing now.
In his 2015 TED Talk, the billionaire called the infectious disease a bigger threat to the world than a nuclear war. He subsequently wrote in the New England Journal of Medicine that "an epidemic is one of the few catastrophes that could set the world back drastically in the next few decades."
In his interview with the Wall Street Journal, Gates expressed his regrets, saying he should have pushed harder, that he wished his and other people's warnings led to a more coordinated global action. Now, he is hoping that world leaders will learn from this tragedy and invest in systems that will prevent outbreaks in the future.
Gates said The Gates Foundation is planning to spend billions of dollars investing in factories for seven potential coronavirus vaccines - knowing that billions may end up being wasted on treatments that don't work.
So far, the foundation has already committed $305 million to combat COVID-19, but Gates is reportedly prepared to spend more.
And yet, Gate's mission to put an end to the coronavirus has made him the target of conspiracy theorists. His close ties with the World Health Organization also made him one of Donald Trump's critics, who has recently decided to stop funding the WHO.
The business magnate continues to advocate lockdowns and quarantine guidelines to curb the spread of the virus. If all goes well, he said that life could slowly return to normal in June, based on his predictions.
Gates is reminding the public, however, of the possibility of a second wave of COVID-19 once social distancing guidelines are relaxed.
The U.S. has become the center of the pandemic, with more than 1.3 million confirmed cases and nearly 80,000 deaths.
