Posted on 02/28/2020 3:01:53 PM PST by NRx
Billionaire and Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates said the coronavirus that has killed at least 2,859 people and infected more than 83,700 globally may be the “once-in-a-century pathogen we’ve been worried about.”
“I hope it’s not that bad, but we should assume it will be until we know otherwise,” Gates wrote in an article published Friday in The New England Journal of Medicine.
Gates and his wife, Melinda, founded The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation in 2000 to help improve world health and combat extreme poverty. The foundation announced Feb. 5 that it would donate $100 million to help find treatments and expand testing for the virus, particularly for poorer populations.
According to Gates, COVID-19 poses a serious threat to the world because it’s far more deadly and contagious than many other deadly viruses.
“First, it can kill healthy adults in addition to elderly people with existing health problems,” he wrote. “Second, Covid-19 is transmitted quite efficiently. The average infected person spreads the disease to two or three others — an exponential rate of increase.” World health leaders say the disease is spread by people who are mildly ill or don’t show any symptoms at all, making it harder to contain and more contagious than other types of viruses.
The mortality rate is “many times more severe than typical seasonal influenza,” Gates said. The World Health Organization said the mortality rate of COVID-19 can differ, ranging from 0.7% to up to 4%, depending on the quality of the health-care system where it’s treated. Gates said that its current average estimated fatality rate of around 1% places it somewhere between the 1957 Asian flu pandemic (0.6%) that killed 1.1 million people and the 1918 Spanish flu pandemic (2%) that killed 50 million around the world, according to data from the CDC.
(Excerpt) Read more at cnbc.com ...
some probably are. some may be able to filter them out. do you know about gates? I certainly don’t.
“I hope it’s not that bad, but we should assume it will be until we know otherwise,” - Bill Gates
That’s actually good advice.
Though people will hate him for saying it.
“Stay in your lane, Bill.”
He’s done more for public health that the CDC.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bill_%26_Melinda_Gates_Foundation
I agree. It’s become fairly popular on here to ridicule those raising the alarm. But the truth is we don’t know how bad this is going to be. I hope it turns out to be a wet squib instead of a bomb. But it would be irresponsible not to prepare for a worst case scenario. And the possibility that this could be bad is very real.
“...the coronavirus that has killed at least 2,859 people and infected more than 83,700 globally...”
Heads up...regular Flu (despite ample vaccines and knowledge about it), infects over 30 MILLION AMERICANS every year (between 8% and 11% on average).
I wonder if Gates wanted to “give President Trump and out” by saying we expect a once-a-century outbreak of some disease...or if he wanted to sound astute w/o realizing what he was saying...
Quite old? Is 64 considered quite old? Yikes.
I stand corrected.
Cholera or typhus in the California tent squatter communities will kill people on a scale that will make the corona virus pseudo crisis trivial
I did not realize he was that young still!
Ok, I modify my previous statement, he could learn pretty much anything he wanted easily still, and if he chooses, has the time and ability to do so.
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