Bill Gates is among the 25 greatest leaders in the world in the midst of a pandemic. The founder of Microsoft warned seven years ago of the risk of a pandemic and every time he speaks, the world stops to listen to his reflections. “You have to think about the next pandemic,” he confessed at the beginning of last year. For this 2022 his new predictions are encouraging. The latest, through a chat on social networks with Devi Sridhar , director of Global Health Governance and professor at the Faculty of Medicine of the University of Edinburgh, advance their prognosis on the end of covid. Bill Gates himself has just offered a summary of said conversation through his twitter profile .
ICYMI here’s a recap of my conversation with @devisridhar. We chatted about this pandemic, how to prevent the next one, and a few things in between. https://t.co/UKOGoXm9EL
— Bill Gates (@BillGates) January 13, 2022
Bill Gates believes that the arrival of the Omicron variant will mark a before and after for humanity. He explains that “as countries experience their wave of Omicron, health systems will be affected. The majority of severe cases will be unvaccinated people. Once Omicron passes through a country, the rest of the year there should be far fewer cases, so covid can be treated more like a seasonal flu.
Gates and Sridhar chatted about vaccines, their efficiency and the aspects that need to be improved so that they have a total impact on society. How could it be otherwise, they praise the work of researchers and the advances in vaccines, which “prevent serious illness and death very well, but they lack two key things.” And that’s where the founder of Microsoft stops. “We need vaccines that prevent reinfection and last for many years.”
Bill Gates: “We need vaccines that prevent reinfection and last for many years”
What if a new variant appears, as has happened in recent months with the different mutations of the virus
“It is not likely that there will be a more transmissible variant than Omicron, although many things have surprised us during this pandemic,” said the American philanthropist, who, at a time when he is in the eye of the hurricane due to the Djokovic case, has wanted praise the attitude shown by countries like Australia during the pandemic . “They moved quickly to diagnose large-scale cases and isolate infected people. They were able to limit deaths dramatically. Once the numbers go up in a country, it’s too late. So the first few months made a big difference.” “, value.
2022, the beginning of the end of the pandemic
And it also congratulates those countries in which “a better job was done by reducing mobility, wearing masks and protecting the elderly”, such as the case of Spain, which the WHO already highlighted a few months ago.
Thus, according to Bill Gates, the end of the pandemic is near. Very close. “Omicron’s wave should last less than three months. Those few months could be bad, but the pandemic may end in 2022.”And from there, he hopes that the world has learned and unites to fight the next one, something that he is not as sure of as his interviewer.