'If we make the right choices and investments, we can make COVID-19 the last pandemic.'
Bill Gates is positive the coronavirus can be the last global pandemic — so much so that he’d decided to write a book explaining why he believes so.
Gates’s forthcoming ‘How to Prevent the Next Pandemic’ is expected to hit shelves in May, he shared on his blog, GatesNotes, on Tuesday.
The Microsoft co-founder will ‘lay out specific steps’ needed to stop future pandemics, outline lessons we’ve learned from this pandemic and discuss the innovations needed to stop pathogens early and equitably.
‘This is something I’ve been thinking about for a long time, and COVID has only made it clearer that the world needs to prioritize eliminating pandemics as a threat to humanity,’ Gates wrote.
With the book, Gates will answer some pressing pandemic-related questions, including why we didn’t have vaccines more quickly and why it’s hard to quickly produce billions of vaccines.
It will also include lessons learned from Gates’ conversations with various pubclic health leaders, including Anthony Fauci, the chief medical advisor to the President, and Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, the leader of the United Nations (UN) Health Agency.
‘The goal of no more pandemics ever is ambitious, but the progress we’ve made over the last two years — including the huge leaps forward we’ve made with vaccines and the knowledge we’ve gained about respiratory illnesses — has already set us on a path to success’
‘No one needs to be convinced that an infectious disease could kill millions of people or shut down the global economy,’ Gates wrote. ‘If we make the right choices and investments, we can make COVID-19 the last pandemic.’
The book will be published through Knopf in the US and Penguin Random House internationally. It is expected to become available for purchase on May 3, 2022.
The 66-year-old billionaire who recently split from his wife Melinda Gates after 27 years of marriage, has been an advocate for Covid vaccines since the start of the pandemic. Their foundation, dedicated to ridding the world of diseases such as Polio, Malaria and Ebola, has pledged $2 billion in total since January 2020 to fight the spread of Covid-19.
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