Microsoft owner Bill Gates had predicted the outbreak of a pandemic similar to coronavirus. A time-lapse video shows how people might die in the next 6 months.
The coronavirus outbreak has engulfed the world in chaos. It’s a constant state of fear, the alarm of getting infected, having no cases at all to finding the first one around you. World governments are in a mess.
Philanthropist Bill Gates last year during a conference had vocalised his concerns about the world’s preparedness for an epidemic. He had said, “In the case of biological threats that sense of urgency is lacking.”
It’s time we revisit his gospel.
As of March 02, 2020, reportedly coronavirus has infected 83,386 people around the world. The current death toll is 3,048 deaths – including 2,794 in China, 34 in Italy, 12 in Japan, 54 in Iran, 2 in France, 22 in South Korea, 2 in the US and 1 each in Taiwan, Philippines, Thailand and Australia.
Microsoft co-founder, Gates recently wrote an article for The New England Journal of Medicine stating, “I hope it’s not that bad, but we should assume it will be until we know otherwise.”
Predicting the Coronavirus Outbreak
A year ago, during a conference held by Massachusetts Medical Society, Gates previously predicted, “The world needs to prepare for pandemics in the same serious way it prepares for war.” During the same conference, he had pressed on an extensive study conducted by the Institute for Disease Modelling that explains how quickly a pandemic can spread around the world.
A time-lapse video shows how the virus spreading from China could eventually kill 33 million people around the world.
On Ground Zero
Now a year later, the world is actually facing the predicted threat from a new, previously unseen strain of coronavirus. Dubbed as NCOVID-19, the virus has engulfed people in fear and misinformation too. Apart from ground zero in Wuhan, China, the virus has spread to 67 countries including the US, Japan, France, Italy, South Korea, Singapore, Thailand, Taiwan, Vietnam, Saudi Arabia and Hong Kong.
The coronavirus currently has no cure but the pharmaceutical industries and Chinese researchers are relentlessly looking for one. The epicentre of the epidemic Wuhan alone has a population of 11 million people and evidence of human to human contamination.
The Epidemic is Getting Bigger
World Health Organisation spokesperson Christian Lindmeier told reporters in Geneva, “The outbreak is getting bigger.” Further adding, “The scenario of the coronavirus reaching multiple countries, if not all countries around the world, is something we have been looking at and warning against since quite a while.” Some reports suggest that experts have warned Coronavirus may prove as deadly as the Spanish flu, which claimed 50 million lives.
The Cure Conversation
To date, the coronavirus outbreak has already caused 10 times more damage in a quarter of the time compared to the deadly SARS. Gates, in his article, urged for a larger systemic change so we can respond more efficiently and effectively when the next epidemic arrives. He further presses on the need to invest in disease surveillance and rules requiring countries to share information.
Travel around the world is almost on hold as people are avoiding public places. WHO has issued basic protective measures for the people that asks them to wash hands regularly, avoid touching eyes, nose, mouth; to take fever and cough seriously among other things.
With new cases rising every day and still no cure at hand – with the current Coronavirus outbreak, it’s just a matter of time that Bill Gate’s prediction might actually come true.
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