Zerohedge: If a deadly pandemic comparable to the 1918 influenza epidemic reaches the US in the near future, the US government will be powerless to stop it. And, in all likelihood, hundreds of thousands - if not millions - of Americans will die.
The message is reported by The Washington Post from an interview with Microsoft founder Bill Gates, and from a multi-topic speech he gave Friday before the Massachusetts Medical Society.
Bill Gates said the US government is lagging behind in preparing the country and the world for "the significant likelihood of a global and deadly modern pandemic threatening our lives."
Gates discussed his efforts to persuade the Trump administration to allocate more funds to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and prioritize creating a national response plan that will regulate and determine how resources will be used during a pandemic or attack using biological weapons.
During the interview, the billionaire confirmed that he raised the issue of pandemic preparedness with President Trump and that he was trying to convince the President that he has a plan to tackle global health security.
Gates said Trump encouraged him to discuss these issues with officials at the Department of Health and Human Services, the National Institutes of Health and the Food and Drug Administration. Gates said he also met with McMaster, who was dismissed from his position as national security adviser last month, and he also hopes to meet with McMaster's successor, John Bolton.
Gates, and his Gates Foundation, which focuses on public health issues, have recently turned their attention to the international community and its preparation for the pandemic.
Gates and his wife, Melinda, have repeatedly warned that the pandemic is the immediate greatest threat to humanity. Experts say the risk is high because new pathogens are constantly emerging, and everything in the world is interconnected.
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Many experts agree that the United States remains inadequately prepared for a pandemic or bioterrorism threat. The sprawling government bureaucracy, they say, is not agile enough to deal with the mutations that suddenly turn the flu virus into a particularly dangerous strain, as was the case with the 1918 flu, which killed 50 million to 100 million people worldwide.
If today what happened in 1918 happened, almost 33 million people worldwide would die in just six months, Bill Gates noted in his speech, citing simulations done by the Institute for Disease Modeling, a research organization from Bellevue, Wash …
So what the US should do, according to Gates: The country needs to prioritize developing better vaccines, including a “universal” influenza vaccine and other treatments, and new diagnostic capabilities to help doctors detect and detect a pandemic before it occurs. will begin to spread.
But even the most advanced defenses are useless without a plan to deploy them, which Gates said the Trump administration recognizes as well.
Trump and senior administration officials reaffirmed the importance of tackling infectious disease outbreaks. But the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is facing a cut in emergency funding since the 2014 Ebola epidemic and has begun to slash its epidemic prevention efforts in 39 of the 49 countries most at risk of disease.
Congress provided additional funding to cover last month's expenses. But he also directed the administration to develop a comprehensive plan to strengthen global health security at home and abroad.
This could be an important first step if the White House and Congress seize the opportunity to articulate and embrace US leadership,”Gates said in his speech.
He noted that no other country possesses the depth of scientific and technical knowledge that the United States possesses, drawing on the resources of institutions such as the NIH, CDC and the Biomedical Research and Development Center, and the US Department of Defense's Agency for promising defense research projects.
While some admire Gates' impulse, other experts on the emergence of a global pandemic in the near future see Gates as an optimist on the level of Walt Disney.
“We know it is coming, but we cannot stop it,” said WHO infectious disease specialist Dr. Sylvie Brand.
If you have not yet stocked up on the means of protection against the approaching pandemic, then now is the time to purchase something, at least protective masks.
Here it will be appropriate to recall Gates' plans to depopulate the population.
His frank confession came at a conference in California in 2010, when Gates lifted the curtain on an almost unknown aspect of his work - population decline.
Gates mentioned this at a private conference in Long Beach, California called the TED2010 Conference in his “Updating to Zero!” Speech. Along with the scientifically absurd proposal to artificially reduce global CO2 emissions to zero by 2050, at about four and a half minutes of his speech, Gates states: “First we got the population. There are 6.8 billion people in the world today. This number will rise to about 9 billion. Now, if we really do a big job on new vaccines, healthcare, reproductive health services, we will reduce it by maybe 10 or 15 percent.”
In plain English, one of the world's most influential people said clearly that he expects vaccines to be used to curb population growth.
And now, in connection with his last speech and interview, we can assume that some kind of plan has appeared related to an artificially caused global pandemic, which will reduce the world's population much faster and more efficiently.
