2020 was cursed from the start to the end, mostly due to the chaos SARS CoV-2 put our world in. The pandemic-causing novel coronavirus has claimed several lives while locking most of us indoors.?
However, this pain is on the verge of ending as last week we saw the UK commencing vaccinations in its county with other nations approving the use of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine.?
But Microsoft founder and philanthropist, Bill Gates has now warned individuals that the coming six months would be the most catastrophic in the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic.
Gates said in a statement to CNN, ¡°Sadly, the next four to six months could be the worst of the pandemic. The IHME (Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation) forecast shows over 200,000 additional deaths. If we would follow the rules, in terms of wearing masks and not mixing, we could avoid a large percentage of those deaths."
He spoke about how in 2015 he predicted that the US would handle the pandemic better, however, it wasn¡¯t really the case, "Overall, when I did the forecasts in 2015, I talked about the deaths potentially being higher. So, this virus could be more fatal than it is. We didn't get the worst-case. But the thing that has surprised me is that the economic impact in the US and around the world has been much greater than the forecasts that I made five years ago."
Bill Gates also spoke about how the US (and some other nations) needs to not just prioritise distribution of the vaccine to Americans before it goes to people in other countries as it is impacting not just the lives of the people but also the global economy,?
He said "We want the world economy to be going. We want to minimize the deaths. And, you know, the basic technology is a German company. And so blocking international sharing and cooperation has been disruptive and a mistake during this entire pandemic."?
He added, "So, we need to ramp up the capacity of all the vaccines. There will be some additional ones approved in the months ahead that are easier to scale up the manufacturing. But the US has benefited from other country¡¯s work care, and we shouldn¡¯t? be entirely selfish in how we go forward.¡±
When asked if he¡¯d get vaccinated in public, just like former presidents Barack Obama, Bill Clinton and George Bush, he said he won¡¯t budge when it¡¯s his turn, "I will do the same. When it's my turn -- I'm not going to budge, but when my turn comes up, I will visibly take the vaccine, because I think that it's a benefit to all people to not be transmitting."