Ezra Klein: So in 2015 I asked you what you were afraid of.
Bill Gates: The big worry for me – I would say even a likelihood during my lifetime is
a big epidemic.
Klein: So let me ask you the reverse of it.
I'm thinking three or five years into the future beyond just a vaccine.
What are you hopeful for?
What do you hope for?
Gates: Well, I hope that this draws the world together.
I mean after World War II
we created new institutions and we successfully avoided having another world war.
And that's a phenomenal thing.
We haven't blown off a nuclear weapon as part of a conflict.
We did that by binding ourselves together through a variety of institutions – including
WHO on health.
Archival narrator: “Churchill Roosevelt and Stalin dedicated their nations to the
foundations for permanent peace for a United Nations organization”
Here –
"It felt like I was working in a warzone."
"They all have Covid."
This is a tragic event.
Whatever good comes out of this will in no way make up for the problems that it causes.
The disease got into exponential growth in a lot of Europe and the United States.
And so the toll there is greater than I would have expected.
You know, we're learning about how to do testing well.
A lot of countries got that right and did it very early on.
I think part of it is that the minor epidemics we had really didn't hit the US.
So if you look at the Asian countries that did well,
places like Taiwan or South Korea
because they were hit with MERS or SARS.
They had the playbook.
They opened the playbook.
And they went through those steps.
many of them wrote down, you know, step one, identify all PCR machines, step two get supplies
for PCR machines.
You know, we haven't done that in a reasonable way today.
We don't really know what's going to happen in developing countries where most of the
world population lives.
But, unless there's some magical factor, the likelihood that the vast majority of the deaths
will be there is very high.
It's harder for them to socially isolate and they need to get food.
There isn't this ability to do what we've done.
"People are suffering."
"There is no income.
Life is so hard."
It should say to us, OK.
This science is important.
Let's use it to avoid pandemics.
The U.S. Congress – that allocates resources – has been the most generous on HIV funding
for the entire world.
You know, it started under a Republican administration.
George W. Bush: "And to meet a severe and urgent crisis abroad, tonight I propose the
emergency plan for AIDS relief."
Gates: You know, the US government has helped the health of the entire world.
Been a huge part of the reduction in death.
And so I do think what you're seeing in this short term, in terms of how the U.S. is engaging...
Trump: "… to halt funding of the World Health Organization while a review is conducted."
Gates: ...it's not where we'll end up.
I don't see a change in the US Congress and saying, hey, in this case, not only is it
humanitarian,
It's about strategic relationships and it's about making sure the disease isn't coming
back into the US as we participate in global commerce that we benefit immensely from.
You know, everybody brings to the epidemic their hopes that maybe they had before.
And I've always believed in global cooperation…
That human ability to take a much worse situation
and craft it into the institutions and the economic growth and innovation
that we’ve had between World War II and now –
I hope that this looks like that.