men in the world.

Please welcome Bill Gates.

Hi, Bill.

Hi.

First of all, thank you for doing this.

And how is the family?

How are you?

Well, I think everybody's lives have been completely upended

by this social isolation that we're doing to get the disease

numbers way, way down.

So it's disconcerting.

You know, a lot of online school,

a lot of teams meetings.

A completely different routine.

Yeah.

So my question is, you warned everybody about this

in a TED Talk in 2015.

You predicted this would happen.

And so I'm sure you're very prepared, because you

knew this was going to happen.

Do you feel like you prepared for this?

I mean, even though this probably surprised you

beyond what you expected?

Well, the goal of the 2015 talk and the detailed article

in the New England Journal of Medicine

was so that the government would do the work

to be ready for the next epidemic.

And that would have meant that we would have had diagnostics

very quickly, drugs very quickly,

and even a vaccine, all of those things

dramatically faster than what we're going through here.

Over the last five years, the Foundation and others

did make investments in things like a coalition called

CEPI that will help get the vaccine out faster than would

have otherwise been the case.

But only about 5% of what should have

been done to get ready for this-- because this is even,

you know, worse than war.

And yet the amount that was put into it,

the amount we practiced and had the ability

to make these tools, virtually nothing was done.

And so are you saying-- and I don't want

to get political about this.

Obviously this administration is blaming the last administration

saying they didn't have anything.

Did anyone listen to you?

Was there something and then it was then--

like then everybody abandoned it?

Or what happened, exactly?

Well, it's hard to know how much to spend on something that you

can't really compute the probability

in any particular year that it's going to come.

You know, fire, war, earthquakes.

And so government, you know, they look and they see,

we had epidemics like the Ebola epidemic

in Africa that should have gotten us ready.

Then we had Zika.

But a respiratory pandemic that's very widespread, really,

we haven't seen anything like this for the 100 years.

And I actually thought that the anniversary of 1918

would, you know, galvanize people as well.

So a few things were done.

Some countries, even without that preparing in advance,

have acted in a way that made sure

that very few of their citizens die

and they don't have to shut down their economy.

You know, now all the countries that have widespread infection,

like the United States, we need to learn

from each other about how you not only flatten the numbers

but to get them down.

And then, you know, with luck, in early June,

if the whole country does a better job of shutting down

and we get privatization of the testing that's going on,

what policies should we have?

Because until we get almost everybody vaccinated globally,

we still won't be fully back to normal.

We want to go, you know, and manufacture and do construction

and go to school.

But there will be things like big public events

where the risk will outweigh the risk of a disease rebound.

So you just said June, but we aren't

going to have any vaccines for probably a year.

So how-- I mean, I can't even imagine going out

to a crowded restaurant or anything in June or July

if we don't have vaccines.

How do you see us acclimating back

into a normal life when we don't have the cure for this?

Well, your point is a very good one,

which is, even if we're doing the right things,

where we've fixed the testing problems,

we're making sure people are strict about quarantine,

we're doing really good contact tracing,

and so the government is able to encourage

some type of activities to resume.

Even so, the populace has been thinking

about this infectious disease enough

that people will be reluctant even

if they say, OK, it's fine to send your kids to school.

I hope we have enough proof that everybody will feel

like they go along with that.

If you want to reopen a factory, do enough workers

show up that you can really engage in that activity?

Some things, like restaurants, will probably

have more spacing, and the demand

will be reduced because of what we've all gone through here.

But we need to start getting things back to normal.

They won't be back to normal until we either

have that phenomenal vaccine or a therapeutic that's

like over 95% effective.

And so we have to assume that's going to be

almost 18 months from now.

But I mean, you and Melinda--

first of all, that's why I call you the most generous,

and I should include Melinda in this, too.

You're both extremely generous.

You donated $100 million to fight this

as soon as this started.

In February, I think, you donated the money.

So that 100 million is going to go towards, obviously,

trying to find a vaccine, but also this therapeutic

that you're talking about that will be like a temporary fix?

That's right.

The Foundation does far more in terms

of infectious disease work than any group in the world.

And so we've re-prioritized, and everybody

and all our grantees now, prioritized

this coronavirus work.

So, you know, even polio eradication,

we're not able to work on that, or new drugs for HIV.

But that skill set is very applicable to helping

pick which drugs should go into trials

and which vaccines we should build factories

for so that, if one proves safe and efficacious,

we can make billions of doses.

So our whole thing is upended.

We're giving money to up the testing capacity,

because in developing countries where

they can't do these quarantines, that's

where, sadly, the vast majority of the deaths

are likely to take place.

Yeah.

All right, we're going to take a break.

We'll be right back after this.

So I still don't--

I mean, I can't wrap my head around,

if we don't really have a cure for it-- like, you know,

I'm obviously doing my show from my house.

And as a lot of other people, you know,

that have shows are able to do.

But I can't imagine having an audience

all kind of sitting next to each other and that being--

because also isn't it possible that it comes back in the fall?

Well, we don't know how seasonal it is.

So that would actually be good news,

that is that the force of infection

went down in the summer.

That would make this thing of getting the case numbers way

down so we start opening up.

That would actually make it easier.

But you're right, then we'd have to pay attention

to it coming back.

But there are ways of doing it that China is showing,

that South Korea is showing, that the risk of infection

is very, very low.

So you might be back in your studio

because the way the workers engage

with each other and the amount they

can be tested to make sure nobody's infectious

will be very different from what we have today.

You may or may not have the audience.

I would guess that will take a lot longer than going back

to the studio for the filming itself.

You know, speaking of that, I mean,

there's no cars on the road, very few planes.

I mean, it's obviously affecting the economy in a bad way.

But the planet is benefiting from this.

And I know that's been important,

the environmental issue, for you.

I mean, they just said the air in Los Angeles

is cleaner than it's ever been in the history of, I mean,

ever.

That's amazing.

Yeah, I wish that all our jobs could

be done from home as well as your job and my job, you know?

But for people who are in restaurants or factories

or construction or cleaning, you know,

they are looking at their livelihood going away.

And so, sadly, like many bad things,

those who are in the toughest circumstances

are going to bear most of the pain.

And so we really want to get into this semi-normal phase

as soon as we can.

And then the vaccine is the thing that will change things.

And that's why, you know, really figuring out,

how do we make sure it's safe?

Because when you give it to seven billion healthy people,

that's super important.

So the challenge we put to scientists at the Foundation

and many, many places who are working night and day on this

is very high.

And although the best case is actually

shorter than 18 months, we don't want

to create a lot of expectations.

Because we really aren't quite sure.

So people like Fauci and myself are giving that

as kind of the likely date.

It could be better.

It could be worse.

So 18 months.

And the economy is already, as you mentioned--

I mean it's heartbreaking what's happening to people out there

that were already living paycheck to paycheck

and now don't know when they're going to get paid again.

And, you know, it's a strain on unemployment.

Everyone's-- you know, it's an issue for everyone.

So how does the economy bounce back from something like this?

Do you do you have faith that it will?

Or how long do you think it's going to take?

Well, it won't go back to normal in some very rapid fashion.

Because not only do we have, you know, these factories shut down

and all these activities have ceased, even as we start them

back up people will still be a bit leery about going out.

And they will have seen their investments

and their job security greatly reduced.

So the ebb-- the strong economy we had

will take several years before that comes back.

The good thing about the economy is that eventually it

will come back.

The medical price that will be paid by countries

all over the world, you know, that's a lot of deaths

that we'll simply never be able to reverse that at all.

Then here's a question that I don't know if you can answer.

But, you know, I was talking to Pink,

who of course, had COVID-19, and her three-year-old baby, who

is now two days fever free, so he's getting better.

And she's feeling much better.

But she's super healthy and yet she gets it.

You know, in the beginning it was

only older people that were vulnerable

or people with pre-existing conditions.

And then it's, you know, babies and people that are healthy.

And then, you know, she gets it and she's

in the same house with her husband and her daughter

and they don't get it.

So how is it so--

and she never had fever.

She didn't have the same symptoms that everybody--

she never once had fever.

So it's all over the place.

How is this happening to really healthy people?

Yeah, we have a surveillance network

that we've started here in Seattle