Gates warned about the possibility of a COVID-like pandemic in a series of talks several years before it happened, in interviews and appearances including his 2015 TED talk, “The next outbreak? We’re not ready.”
“The world now understands how seriously we should take pandemics, and momentum is on our side,” Gates writes in his preview of the book.
“No one needs to be convinced that an infectious disease could kill millions of people or shut down the global economy.
If we make the right choices and investments, we can make COVID-19 the last pandemic.”
Bill Gates: “The world today has 6.8 billion people,” reads the quote. “That’s headed up to about 9 billion.
Now, if we do a really great job on new vaccines, health care, reproductive health services, we could lower that by perhaps 10 or 15 percent.” The word “vaccines” is underlined in the quote.
In the 27-minute clip, Gates said there are “four factors” that can solve the problem of carbon emission. One factor concerns population sustainability, but it does not make up the entire solution, as the newspaper in the video claims.
With better health care and improved access to vaccines, Gates said, the world’s population could reduce by 10% to 15%.
The quote, in context, was referring to the stabilization of future population growth to help reduce carbon emissions.
