The next deadly disease that will cause a global pandemic is coming, Bill Gates said on Friday at a discussion of epidemics.
We're not ready.
An illness like the pandemic 1918 influenza could kill 30 million people within six months, Gates said, adding that the next disease might not even be a flu, but something we've never seen.
The world should prepare as it does for war, Gates said.
If there's one thing that we know from history, it's that a deadly new disease will arise and spread around the globe.
That could happen easily within the next decade. And as Bill Gates told listeners on Friday at a discussion about epidemics hosted by the Massachusetts Medical Society and the New England Journal of Medicine, we're not ready.
Gates acknowledged that he's usually the optimist in the room, but he presented a simulation by the Institute for Disease Modeling that found that a new flu like the one that killed 50 million people in the 1918 pandemic would now most likely kill 30 million people within six months.
If you were to tell the world's governments that weapons that could kill 30 million people were under construction right now, there'd be a sense of urgency about preparing for the threat, Gates said.
The one time the military tried a sort of simulated war game against a smallpox pandemic, the final score was "smallpox one, humanity zero," Gates said.
uk.businessinsider.com
