60 minutes overtime so i got asked what is what is this this is the table of elements
this is what the world's made of this week on 60 minutes we're going to be interviewing bill gates
i'm a geek but you have way out geeked me well he's fascinating to be around he's somebody who
you know is really interested in everything and so there's really nothing you can't talk to him
about that he doesn't know uh a tremendous amount of about the first time i ever met you it was some
event i was sitting next to you and i i realized that you're probably not a small talk person
so i just the first thing i started talking to you about was uh guinea worm because i'm fascinated by
guinea worm disease and i realized that's the way to talk to you i can just quiz you about all this
stuff that really is interesting and ask me about kennyworm yes i'm optimal you were great i know
we had a great conversation he is very immersed in the here and the now and very immersed in coming
up with solutions you know this is a guy who reads thousands of pages of scientific reports
you know every week he warned about the potential for a global pentagon years ago if anything
kills over 10 million people in the next few decades it's most likely to be a highly
infectious virus rather than a war not missiles but microbes with several billion dollars
in 2015 what could have been done you could have uh turned on large-scale pcr diagnostics testing
very quickly and so when people were coming out of china you could have tested them and quarantined
the the people who tested positive because you would have had the tests already developed you
could have rolled the test out so quickly if you gain a month in terms of having that capacity it's
a completely different epidemic for the country there's really no reason that america should
be at the bottom of the list in response to this pandemic there's every reason we should have been
the best and we were the best at funding vaccine research and so the world in that one category uh
benefited immensely from from the u.s has the speed of the development of the vaccine
surprised you dr fauci and i knew that there was a possibility that in 12 months we would have the
vaccines no one had ever made an mrna vaccine now those vaccines aren't perfect they're more
expensive than we'd like they're less thermostable and they're harder to scale up so in the next five
to ten years for the next pandemic we will solve all those problems you say the next pandemic
there will be another pandemic absolutely we don't know when you know the risk per year two percent
three percent uh why are you so sure there will be another one right you you roll the dice every year
eventually the dice uh don't favor you i asked him about the mistrust in science and all you know
these conspiracy theories that are floating around about him about the world about his work with
vaccines and clearly there's frustration there and i think he's kind of as mystified as anybody about
about a lot of these conspiracy theories you are incredibly rational and believe in science
we are now in an age where there is intense mistrust of science how does one battle that well
we have to make the truth more interesting than the over simplistic conspiracy how do you do that
there may be some need to slow down the crazy stuff so there is a need for innovation
to think about how you draw these lines and
particularly when you're getting out exposing to strangers something that might draw them into a
a series of falsehoods and so you're able to actually get rid of some co2 by sticking it in
the cement truth of what bill gates is doing on climate change on coronavirus on global
health initiatives combating global poverty it's extraordinary i mean he's spent tens of billions
of dollars and really devoted himself to coming up with innovative ways to find innovative solutions
to the biggest problems that humanity is facing i think you're you're 65. do you think about
legacy no i don't think legacy is motivates anyone i i think about gosh i've got you know
hopefully 20 to 30 years where you know can we eradicate malaria in this time frame uh can we
lay the groundwork for a climate solution in this time frame and so i feel a little bit
of sense of urgency that the you know anything after 30 years i don't get to to be involved in