American businessman and billionaire Bill Gates has called for a nationwide social isolation policy in the state, saying that is what will help reduce deaths from Coronavirus and economic crisis it poses on the nation.
In a virtual conversation on CBS This Morning with Anthony Mason, the Microsoft founder, whose foundation has committed $100 million to the combat against Coronavirus added that the nationwide social isolation policy will help to slow the pandemic’s spread and help the federal government to set its priorities on testing. See excerpts from the conversation below as reported by CBS This Morning Bill Gates: It’ll help everyone get out of this more quickly and reduce the deaths and reduce the economic reduction, if we implement these strong isolation measures on a countrywide basis. Anthony Mason: Well, we obviously have some states taking different policies than others. Do you think we need leadership from the White House that we’re not getting? Gates: I think that the pressure by fellow governors, the executive branch, the experts should be very strong so that all 50 governors are seeing that they need to do this, or that there is a federal order about the social isolation. The sooner you start, the less cases you’re going to have, and the sooner we can all go back to some level of normalcy. Mason: You’ve been saying for a long time that we’re not prioritizing testing. Who should be leading the way here? Gates: Well, the federal government needs to set the priorities, because we have a lot of people who are just worried, who’d like to get a test. And if we had infinite capacity, that would be great. And so as many as half of our tests are going to the people they shouldn’t. And that’s causing you to have to wait, often three or four days, even if you’re a health care worker, to get that result back. Mason: Back in 2015, you warned that we were not ready for the next epidemic. Why aren’t we better prepared? Read also: Coronavirus: Bill Gates Is The Enemy – Susan Peters Gates: Well, in fact, very little investment was made into, for example, being able to ramp up diagnostic capacity very quickly… Our foundation and some other governments did work on some new vaccine platforms, which are the most promising… But you know, sadly, because you can’t estimate the risk, and it was something I was, you know, trying to talk about, and you know, thought we had some engagement on. But then actually, the personnel in this area were cut back… So, you know, I think this time, people understand that this is a trillions-of-dollars event. It’s going to be hundreds of thousands of lives on a on a global basis. I think now people understand why those alarms were raised, and that, for the next one, we will be far more ready than we were for this one.
Bill Gates says social isolation policy will reduce deaths from Coronavirus and economic crisis it poses on the nation.
