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How to Prevent the Next Pandemic by Bill Gates review – a germ of an idea
The tech pioneer wants us to prepare for the ‘Big One’ by holding regular pandemic exercises. But how do you deal with the threat posed by fake news?
You’d have to be living under a rock not to know we are in the midst of one of the most devastating pandemics in history. Just how devastating became clear earlier this month when the World Health Organization released a report estimating the global excess death toll due to the pandemic as 15 million – nearly three times the official Covid death count. Other authorities think global excess deaths may be closer to 18 million. These are awfully big numbers, but they pale in comparison with the 1918-1919 Spanish influenza pandemic, which killed an estimated 40 million people – equivalent to about 150 million globally using current population figures.
So, miserable as Covid has been, it is not the “Big One”. According to Bill Gates, that spectre awaits us in the not too distant future, which is why we’d be advised to start preparing now. “It will be tempting to assume that the next major pathogen will be as transmissible and lethal as Covid, and as susceptible to innovations like mRNA vaccines. But what if it isn’t?” he writes in his new book.
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