Microsoft founder
Bill Gates publishes new book “How to prevent the next pandemic”
Bill Gates at the launch of his new book
© Evan Agostini/Invision/AP/DPA
Bill Gates has long been a public health advocate. This earned him many enemies in the corona pandemic. Now he has published a new book and is defending himself against his critics.
On a Friday evening in February 2020, it became clear to him that the outbreak of a novel corona virus that had just become known “would grow into a global catastrophe,” writes Bill Gates. He then reacted as always when something worried him: He started talking to a lot of experts about the topic, getting information and assessments from them. The foundation, which he runs together with his wife Melinda, who has since separated, has so far donated more than two billion dollars to prevent and combat the pandemic, especially in poorer countries.
Bill Gates launches new book and calls infectious diseases an ‘obsession’
What Gates has learned in the past two years, he has now written down – to prevent a repetition. “How we can prevent the next pandemic” is the title of the work that has just been published in German by Piper-Verlag at the same time as the English original.
The subject is no stranger to the 66-year-old. Infectious diseases are “a kind of obsession” for him, writes the Microsoft founder and billionaire. He could spend hours reading books and scientific articles on the subject or hanging around on websites with data collections. For decades he has been involved with his Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation in the fight against polio, AIDS, tuberculosis, malaria and other diseases.
“The world has never really invested in the tools it needs or systematically prepared for a pandemic,” Gates concludes. “It’s high time we changed that.” He sees the following steps as most important: A pandemic prevention team must be set up, the early detection of outbreaks must work better, people must be helped more quickly and better to protect themselves, the search for new active ingredients must be accelerated and vaccine production must be prepared – and all of this has to be practiced, well planned and financed.
Criticism of Corona management by ex-President Donald Trump
Gates writes that none of these are revolutionary findings, but they were disregarded in the corona pandemic, even in rich countries, and he sharply attacks the USA in particular: “The reaction of the White House in 2020 was catastrophic. President Trump and his senior advisers downplayed the pandemic and offered abysmal bad advice to the public. Incredibly, federal agencies have refused to share data with each other.” On the other hand, countless helpers around the world, for example in hospitals, have done “heroic work”.
Gates knows that he is valued by many people around the world for his work and the many donations from his foundation, but the billionaire born in Seattle in 1955 to a teacher and a wealthy lawyer is also very aware of the criticism directed at him. “The most plausible version of it goes something like this,” Gates himself writes. “Bill Gates is a non-democratically elected billionaire—who is he to set the agenda on public health issues or whatever?”
He is aware that his prosperity has “largely shielded him from the consequences of the Covid 19 pandemic”. But his goal – transparently set out by the foundation – is still “to return most of my wealth to society in a way that makes the world a fairer place”.
Bill Gates criticizes vaccination opponents and conspiracy ideologues
Gates, on the other hand, has less understanding for the ongoing disparagement, especially by opponents of vaccination and conspiracy theorists. Gates wrote that he was “amazed” at how often he had become the “object of wild conspiracy theories.”
“While this isn’t a new experience for me — odd ideas about Microsoft have been floating around for decades.” But today the attacks are more violent. “I never quite knew whether or not to act on ideas like that. If I ignore them, they just keep spreading. But can I really convince people who believe in such conspiracy theories by saying publicly: ‘I am Not interested in tracking your movements, I don’t give a damn where you go or drive, and there really isn’t a movement tracker in vaccines?'” In any case, Gates said, he’s decided to just keep doing his job going forward and shut down hoping “that the truth will outlive the lies”.