The next outbreak? we’re not ready (2015) [video] | Hacker News Reader

The next outbreak? we’re not ready (2015) [video]

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90 pointssavrajsingh36 comments

It's interesting to look back at these sort of prescient events and laud the people who got it right and ignore all the people that 'got it wrong'.

However in Bill Gates' case, he really was being realistic and not prescient given his close work with global healthcare. He must have seen up close how fragile this whole setup was.

Let's discard present circumstances, then, and notice that he just resigned from his board seats with Microsoft and Berkshire to focus all of his energy on climate change. He is treating that far more seriously than he treated pandemic preparedness.

Also, we should forever be thankful that such a mild version of the coronavirus mutated a structural upgrade like the furin cleavage site. If this had happened with SARS, MERS, or a hemorrhagic fever it could have been real trouble.

> to focus all of his energy on climate change.

Not true. Press release says "global health, development, education, and his increasing engagement in tackling climate change".

> Also, we should forever be thankful that such a mild version of the coronavirus mutated a structural upgrade like the furin cleavage site. If this had happened with SARS, MERS, or a hemorrhagic fever it could have been real trouble.

would you mind elaborating, because i don't understand or follow this.

what is the relevance of mutating a "structural upgrade like the furin cleavage site"? forgive my lack of biology, but i both don't understand what this means nor its relevance.

in "if this had happened with...", what is "this"? if it is the current coronavirus outbreak, isn't the current one much worse because it is more mild than sars?

his wife is also talking about family planning in Africa, a difficult but earth-changing subject that politicians won't touch

And luckily they don't need to as lower birth rates means wrld population will likely peak at 10bn. African birth rates have dropped faster than predictions.

not fast enough for africa to avoid economic disaster

How is this some sort of prescient statement? There have been movies made about this exact issue for decades. On a societal level, it is a bug marked WONTFIX similar to preparing for asteroid impact, the next Big One in SF (come on guys, we arent prepared for it), the next volcano, large scale terrorist attack using chemical weapons, and so on.

It seems nobody has a memory to remember that Microsoft hobbled local governments attempts to build and use open source software instead of paying their tax. In a way, you’re basically thanking Bill Gates for redistributing a small fraction of the money he’s stolen from global governments through the Microsoft monopoly.

If you think this is a conspiracy theory go talk to IT staff who worked in the German government in the late 90s.

“How is this some sort of prescient statement? There have been movies made about this exact issue for decades. On a societal level, it is a bug marked WONTFIX similar to preparing for asteroid impact, the next Big One in SF (come on guys, we arent prepared for it), the next volcano, large scale terrorist attack using chemical weapons, and so on.”

Exactly. A lot of people know the risks but we are not willing to pay for preparedness.

I know it seems unfair to hold Bill Gates forever unable to atone for those business practices, and I applaud him for what he is doing now. However, I still think microsoft was a net loss to society.

Why I feel in a few years we will be watching Independence Day and Oblivion in our caves and thinking "They warned us, but we didn't listen"?

We're not ready for anything, because most of our decision-makers are short-sighted, and populist. Long-term decision making requires long-term thinking which is not compatible with our current economic and political models.

Let’s add our media model in here as well, although it’s also a subset of our economic model.

Full title:

Bill Gates: The next outbreak? We're not ready. (2015) [video]

Also watch: What Bill Gates is afraid of: https://youtu.be/9AEMKudv5p0

"In fact, if there's one positive thing that can come out of the Ebola epidemic, it's that it can serve as an early warning – a wake-up call – to get ready. If we start now, we can be ready for the next epidemic"

He said this in 2015. No one listened.

That's not true. Obama gave the US government processes for dealing with one. That was the function of the NSC, and specifically the pandemic response unit. It was in response to the Ebola outbreak. https://www.nbcnews.com/health/health-news/trump-cuts-nation... has a reasonable history.

The problem is that people are dumb and forgetful.

Correct. And Trump completely disbanded the Pandemic response team in 2018.

Do you have something linkable?

https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/trump-fire-pandemic-team/

https://thehill.com/homenews/administration/487581-bolton-de...

https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2020/03/i-dont-know-anyt...

In 2018 the people in charge of the program were forced out, and Trump repeatedly (unsuccessfully) sought to cut the CDC budget (and the administration is currently still advocated for budget cuts after declaring an emergency, but who knows how long before this guy is thrown under the bus[2])

This was widely condemned but I don’t remember much media coverage. In 2019 a bipartisan group of experts petitioned the president to reinstate those positions and not to cut funding[0], and recently at the start of the outbreak in February senators wrote a letter to the head of the NSC to please appoint people for the pandemic preparedness roles[1], but so far nothing.

[0] https://csis-prod.s3.amazonaws.com/s3fs-public/publication/1...

[1] https://www.schatz.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/021320%20NSC%20N...

[2] https://thehill.com/policy/finance/486817-trump-budget-chief...

Did you open the link two posts above yours?

FYI

https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2020/3/10/1926075/-Trump-St...

This reminds me of the financial crisis in 2008. A ton of people knew what was going on and issued warnings but not many listened. What I don’t like is the effort to make some people like Gates into heroes that saw what nobody else saw. Public health experts warned for decades that we are not prepared but nobody wanted to pay for action.

> What I don’t like is the effort to make some people like Gates into heroes that saw what nobody else saw

Though I suspect if it was Elon Musk who said the same thing, there would be no shortage of hero worship.

Have we found his underwater lair yet? He's trying very hard to be a comic-book mega-industrialist. But his kind of character seems far more like a Bond villain. Dr. Not Yet?

Instead we get this:

https://mobile.twitter.com/elonmusk/status/12360294490421985...

I wonder how many of those experts got on a stage to give 'we, the people' that warning. The media will hide that stuff on page nnn because it's not popular.

Whatever I may think of Gates' past actions, I applaud his educational and other-directed actions ... they're not about consolidating power or fortune. Carping and suspicion about anyone's generosity is bottom-feeding.

We've known for quite some time that globalization and air travel creates risks. Those who benefit from that model haven't been concerned; profits have been priority #1. The rest of have been complacent and complicit.

I'm surprised anyone is surprised.

Yep, it's worrying how little people question the continuing growth of air travel given both its climate and public health damages.

i wonder if this crisis will set up a long-term discussion about this issue from now on

I'm more interested in whether we address supply-chain and infrastructure fragility. Not for economic reasons, but for overall survival and quality of life issues.

Imagine this sort of thing going on contemporaneously with people fleeing coastal cities due to flooding.

not sure how fragile it is, frankly logistics is very robust (and has been since the middle ages). Even with centralization it survives multiple trade wars at this moment. And it depends a lot on information tech which is also robust.

The whole world benefits from these things. The rewards far outweigh the risks.

I think anybody who worked in that area and was honest would have said the same thing.

Maybe that's why its not crazy to consider conspiracy theories about the nature of this virus. It would be beneficial for humanity in the long term to shift e.g. from cyberwarfare defense spending to biowarfare defense. The side benefits of the first are at best marginal , while a massive shift of investment to biodefense would be life-changing

What percentage of bio defense funding will end up going into the bio-equivalent of pen testing and red teams ...? At some point some loon in power will chant “The best biodefense is a good biooffense” ...

it will inevitably come to this. but we also live in a world of deterrence through mutual destruction, not defense

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