If people continue social distancing, coronavirus cases may level off by the end of April, Microsoft co-founder and billionaire Bill Gates said on “Fox News Sunday.” But he added that life still won’t return to “truly normal” until a vaccine is distributed.
It’s also critical that the country test “the right people,” which has not been happening, Gates told host Chris Wallace. In a Washington Post op-ed published last week, Gates said health-care workers and first responders, high-risk people with severe symptoms and those who are likely to have been exposed to infected people should be prioritized.
Gates also suggested in the op-ed that if the United States implements a consistent nationwide approach to shutdowns, increases testing and uses a data-based strategy to develop treatments and a vaccine, a second wave of the epidemic could be avoided.
In a prescient speech in 2015, Gates had warned that an infectious virus could spread globally and cause mass deaths and catastrophe.
“If anything kills more than 10 million people in the next few decades, it’s most likely to be a highly infectious virus, rather than a war,” he said then. “Not missiles, but microbes.”
The White House has released estimates that the new coronavirus could kill between 100,000 and 240,000 Americans. Gates told Wallace that he was glad that the White House released those figures because it was likely to alert people who weren’t taking the virus seriously enough.
