The now-former head of Microsoft has issued a warning about what the U.S. has in store in regards to coronavirus. Bill Gates spoke with CNN about the global pandemic and cautioned that the worse is likely yet to come for the country.
“This is kind of the nightmare scenario,” Gates said, speaking quite frankly on the matter. Gates added that officials in other countries, including China, “are the ones that have done best in this epidemic because they acted when the number of cases were still very, very small.” Additionally, he says that he wished that the U.S. “behaved a little bit like the countries that have done the best on this one.”
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“We have not peaked,” he said. “Basically the whole country needs to do what was done in the part of China where they had these infections.”
Gates, who stepped down as the head of the Microsoft board on March 14, has pivoted his attention to The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, which the couple co-founded in 2000. The philanthropical endeavor is dedicated to enhance healthcare and reduce extreme poverty worldwide. It also focuses on expanding educational opportunities along with access to information technology in the U.S. Gates and his wife serve as trustees along with fellow billionaire and Berkshire Hathaway CEO Warren Buffet.
The predictions he gives have been echoed by health officials, who caution that the 1.5 billion or so people that have been self-isolating may have to hold off from socializing a little while longer. Dr. Ashish Jha, director of the Harvard Global Health Institute, also spoke with CNN about how long before things return to normal.
“This is not a virus that goes away in two weeks or four weeks or six weeks. We are going to be living with this, in one form or another, for 12 to 18 months if we are lucky,” Jha said. “Once we have a vaccine that’s effective and widely deployed we can bring the pandemic to an end. Until that time, we are going to continue to have to confront and deal with the virus.”
According to The CDC, there have been 68,440 confirmed cases of COVID-19 in the U.S., with 994 deaths. While officials recommend only going out for the absolute essentials, many are encouraging helping out the local economy by ordering takeout or delivery from local restaurants, most of which whose dining rooms have closed. Especially since research suggests that ordering food is unlikely to cause an infection.
