Ethen Kim Lieser
“We’re still at risk of this pandemic generating a variant that would be even more transmissive and even more fatal,” the Microsoft co-founder, who had been warning about the threat of a global pandemic since 2015, told the Financial Times on Sunday. “It’s not likely, I don’t want to be a voice of doom and gloom, but it’s way above a 5 percent risk that this pandemic, we haven’t even seen the worst of it,” Gates continued.
Gates noted that one way to prepare for the next pandemic is for the World Health Organization (WHO) to launch a global surveillance team featuring experts who can quickly spot new health threats across the world. He has labeled the proposed task force the “Global Epidemic Response and Mobilization” (GERM) initiative. Gates also told the Financial Times that it would cost around $1 billion a year to run such a global response team, cautioning that the currently set WHO funding was “not at all serious about pandemics.” Gates further said that, “it seems wild to me that we could fail to look at this tragedy and not, on behalf of the citizens of the world, make these investments.”
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