CNBC, FEB 18 2022
Bill Gates said Friday that the risks of severe disease from Covid-19 have “dramatically reduced” but another pandemic is all but certain.
Speaking at Germany’s annual Munich Security Conference, Gates said that a potential new pandemic would likely stem from a different pathogen to that of the coronavirus family.
But he added that advances in medical technology should help the world do a better job of fighting it — if investments are made now.
“We’ll have another pandemic. It will be a different pathogen next time,” Gates said.
Two years into the coronavirus pandemic, Gates said the worst effects have faded as huge swathes of the global population have gained some level of immunity.
Its severity has also waned with the latest omicron variant.
However, Gates said that in many places that was due to virus itself, which creates a level of immunity, and has “done a better job of getting out to the world population than we have with vaccines” …
“Next time we should try and make it, instead of two years [too develop a vaccine], we should make it more like six months,” Gates said.
Standardized platforms, including messenger RNA (mRNA) technology, would make that possible …
