Bill Gates, Microsoft co-founder, philanthropist and business tycoon had cautioned the world about a pandemic in 2015. Nobody at that time had ever thought that the human race would be facing such a threat as Covid-19 has proven to be.
"The next outbreak. We're not ready?" is the Ted Talk of 2015 in which Bill Gate talked about a potential virus like Covid-19. He asked the world to be well-equipped to face potential threats in the form of a virus.
Gates in 2015 said, "If anything kills over 10 million people in the next few decades, it’s likely to be a highly infectious virus rather than a war." He added, it will be "microbes not missiles."
In a chat with Derek Muller, available on a popular YouTube channel "Veritasium" said he doesn't feel good about the prophecy that he made in 2015. Gates' Ted Talk became talk of the town in March last year after the new virus was discovered along with many movies related to the contagion.
In a video call with Muller, Bill Gates said, ""There's no good feeling that comes with something like this: 'I told you so'," Gates says before adding, "Could I have been more persuasive?"
Muller also asked Gates how he was certain about the virus like Covid-19, Gates responded "There are a number of respiratory viruses and from time to time one will come along. Respiratory diseases are very scary because you're still walking around on a plane, a bus when you're infectious. Unlike some other diseases like Ebola where you are mostly in a hospital bed by the time viral load infects other people."
Muller then asked what should humans prepare themselves for in the future. Gates first said it is climate change. After mentioning Climate Change, he added, Every year that would be a death toll even greater than we have had in this pandemic."
Another threat that Gates mentioned was "Bio-terrorism." Bio-terrorism can be in the form of an engineered virus that is likely to inflict a lot of damage. He also talked about Fake-news, Covid-19 and online misinformation on the show of Derek Muller.