Bill Gates’s Coronavirus Vaccine Could Be Ready in 12 Months
Bill Gates is funding development of a vaccine.
"Dr. Fauci and I have been fairly consistent to say 18 months to create expectations that are not too high,” Gates said, referring to Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases and a member of the White House coronavirus task force.
"The availability of testing for the coronavirus has been a sore spot in the U.S. for months. President Donald Trump tweeted on Saturday that the U.S. “just passed 5 million Tests, far more than any other country.”
Just looking at raw numbers misses the true picture, Gates said.
“This focus on the number of tests understates the cacophony and the mistakes we’ve made in the testing system,” Gates said. “The wrong people are being tested, and any time you don’t get results in less than 24 hours, the value of the test is dramatically reduced.”
The philanthropist and co-founder of
Microsoft Corp. said his best-case scenario for a phased reopening of the economy is to “pick the high-value activities like school, manufacturing and construction, and figure out a way to do those with masks and distancing.”
Schools
“If we can figure out how to do K-through-12 in the fall, that would be good,” Gates said, adding that the U.S. may even be able to open colleges “if we’re creative about it.”
“It will probably be in August where we know what’s the protocol, how many schools are opening up, and we won’t really know enough until pretty close to the start,” he said.
Gates also warned that trying to rush a reopening and generating “exponential” growth in Covid-19 cases “will be seeding other parts of the country,” comparing it to the infection spreading via international travel in early 2020.
Microsoft shares, at around $174, are up about 10% for the year to date, even though major market indexes are down and some companies’ stocks have been hammered.
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