Subtitles section Play video
-
Our next guest is one of the richest and most generous
-
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