I’m Bill Gates. AMA about Covid-19
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Gates Foundation, research, etc etc. I get it. He's been involved with health stuff for a while. In theory, too, I'm open to a good idea regardless of its source. But this remains a guy who dollars to doughnuts I'd bet does not know how much milk costs at his supermarket. And he's telling us about chipping and digital tattoos?
It'd be legit pretty hilarious if it weren't so insane.
It's the fact that Bill is smarter than the people in charge of our institutions. And he has a lot of experience in this domain. And has been warning about exactly this problem for many years. Indeed he warned that pandemics were our biggest blindspot and threat.
E.g., See his TED talk from 2015: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Af6b_wyiwI
The point I'm trying to make in my original comment isn't about BG himself, it's exactly about "the people in charge of our institutions". Rereading it, I didn't make this as clear as possible, so let me take another stab:
We think of ourselves as an advanced democracy (or democratic republic) and economy. We certainly pay for that in taxes and in other ways (obviously we're not Nordic in terms of income tax, but still). But when it's go-time for that advanced democracy, for the institutions and experts we pay to train through years of schooling in public universities and then pay to command highly specialized bodies at local, state, and federal levels, their performance is, excuse my language, so fucking dismal that the vaunted CDC cannot make a working test, that there are not enough latex gloves in that advanced democracy to keep doctors and nurses from getting sick ... their performance is so dismal and we're so untrusting of the basic decency and competence of our experts and elected officials that we crowd into a Reddit AMA to hear a software magnate maybe have a better solution ... Is that not just bizarre to you? Infuriating? Sad?
I fully grant that I may be alone in feeling this way. On some level I'm reacting strongly to the fact that the country I immigrated to as a teenager is revealing itself to be profoundly third-world in certain ways - like, this isn't what I thought I signed up for. Like I said earlier, there's something truly funny about it at the same time that it's terribly sad. (One funny thing is that the solution the guy comes up with is "let's put a microchip in everyone!".) Don't mean to impose my views on anyone, and again, I'm not saying Gates has enabled, via Windows wealth, zero good in the world. It's not about Gates; it's about us.
In the last year of primary school, I was shocked that our teacher was so bad at basic science that he let me, an 11-year-old student run the class. We had this neat physics "kit" with magnets, simple electrical circuits, and an easy to follow instruction leaflet. I simply followed the instructions and helped other students. I remember feeling shocked that the teacher couldn't follow these simple instructions himself. Plug the blue wire in the "A" socket. That kind of thing.
Then in high-school we had specialist teachers. The maths teacher who actually knew maths, the history teacher who actually knew history, and so forth. Still, it was fun to ask probing questions to see what the limits of their knowledge was.
At University... wow! They had electron microscopes! Super computers! A chip manufacturing lab! The professors were often actual researchers, with time on the Hubble telescope! I vividly remember a computer networking class where we used matrix exponentiation to estimate the maximum total throughput of an arbitrary network topology.
The whole time I was thinking to myself: If primary school was shit, high school was okay, and University is such a huge step up from that, surely when I get out of here into the "corporate world" it'll be amazing.
What a shock I was in for!
The real world was a spectacular step down. It was worse than the primary school. At least that teacher knew his limits, admitted them, and delegated to someone who knew what to do.
This doesn't happen in the real world! The manager has to save face. He has to "control the messaging". The issue doesn't exist if it's not reported. As long as the auditors don't find out, it's not really a problem. It doesn't matter if the computer network is slow as molasses, as long as it technically meets the requirement specification, no matter how badly. Nobody tries to do anything well. Hardly anything is optimised. Nothing is measured, certainly not scientifically.
This is just so sad to me.
Back at University I regularly used Wolfram Mathematica to fit complex, non-linear equations to measurements, factoring in errors and everything. The last time I found the excuse to do this at work was two years ago, which was five full years after the previous opportunity to do something scientific, rational, and evidence-based.
Literally just yesterday I was at an emergency services department gearing up for work-from-home. The users were complaining that their sessions were slow. Well... no shit. Of course it's slow. The data centre network is for some reason running at 1Mbps effective on some subnets. They are double-hopping unnecessarily because nobody bothered to read the manual on their remote access solution. They have more than $500K in software and hardware and it's markedly worse than my own remote access to my home PC that cost me nothing. All for the want of a few button presses and a couple of hours investigating why they're getting 0.1% of the rated throughput on their gear.
These very same people are the type in charge. They run the government, the hospitals, the emergency services. You vote for them, and they decide the laws, the budget, and policy. They control the armed forces and the electricity.
I'm shocked that anything works at all, and increasingly I suspect that it does so only because of the unsung heroic efforts of a tiny, silent minority...
I also have the sentiment that many organizations/processes are deeply rotten and dysfunctional.
The only explanation I can find for it is that the society/people are extremely resilient and adaptive - much more than it seems. One of the other days I was watching a WW1 documentary, seeing all those scenes with men fighting in the trenches for months and many who were lucky enough not to be killed came back.
Meanwhile I was thinking to myself - Fuck, if I don't have coffee and some food by noon I'm completely useless. The reality however is that under those circumstances people change and adapt. And it works the same in modern society - there are people living on the streets for many many years, under very harsh conditions. Good or bad, working or not things just move on.
The US Americans may think that they are an advanced democracy, but betting that the Western European societies see the US as a special case of a third world country or failed state is not exactly a risky bet (albeit one that cannot be validated, I’m afraid).
And no, not „because Trump“. Trump is not the reason that the US is the laughingstock of the civilized world, it is the proof that the judgement of the civilized world was warranted all along.
Don‘t get me wrong: many US Americans are very fine people. Some parts of your industry are really impressive. Lots of notable achievements in science. But „the US“ as a nation, and as a society?
There’s nothing we can look up to anymore.
I live in the US largely because I was born here and partly because I don't like the perspective in Europe or E. Asia. I guess I feel the same way about Europe as Europe feels about the US, though if I were in control, I'd probably make some changes that Europeans would agree with (open borders, for one).
Instead of bickering about who is backwards, how about we just work together on things of mutual interest, like increasing free trade and freedom of movement? Name-calling isn't doing anyone any favors. Ideally, you should be able to live where you feel the most comfortable, and you should never be stuck because your government made poor choices.
Granted, that may not always be the case (China being a counterexample here), but one must also be aware of the costs (in terms of freedom) that are associated with government control of such a large portion of citizens' lives and the means of production. If that's what you happen to prefer, you're free to move to a nation that embraces communism. You might fare better in a pandemic, but you might also get locked up (or worse) for saying something that your government doesn't agree with.
As for me, I prefer capitalism and the freedom it gives us to either hoard wealth or (as Gates demonstrates) do tremendous good - not by force, but out of genuine altruism. I'd bet on the success of a Gates-sponsored healthcare solution over a government-sponsored one any day of the week.
So you'd bet that the US is going to deal with the pandemic more effectively than China has? That doesn't seem likely at the moment.
“Preliminary investigations conducted by the Chinese authorities have found no clear evidence of human-to-human transmission of the novel #coronavirus (2019-nCoV) identified in #Wuhan, #China,” the WHO tweeted.
No, that's not what I said.
Again, not what I said. Contributing resources and expertise is not an all-or-nothing scenario. Each dollar spent by Gates fighting COVID-19 will (in my opinion) be significantly more productive than each dollar spent by the US government. But that doesn't mean he's the only force participating in the fight, nor is his contribution insignificant.
If you have an argument to make, please make it, but I'd ask you politely to refrain from straw man arguments or insisting on false dichotomies.
This doesn't sound like you are talking about dollar-for-dollar effectiveness.
Nor does it make sense to suggest that people move to Communist countries, if that's what you meant.
Who is "us" here? Surely you don't think a significant portion of the world population can choose to hoard wealth.
I would bet that plenty of people in the relevant agencies were fully aware of how unprepared we were, and that the decision makers were simply unconvinced that is was important enough oe politically expedient.
IMHO, The primary thing wealth gives you is the time and resources to understand society in great depth. I just wish more wealthy people took that opportunity, but Gates is one of the leaders here.
>>Over the years I’ve had a chance to study diseases like influenza, Ebola, and now COVID-19—including how epidemics start, how to prevent them, and how to respond to them. The Gates Foundation has committed up to $100 million to help with the COVID-19 response around the world, as well as $5 million to support our home state of Washington.
I’m joined remotely today by Dr. Trevor Mundel, who leads the Gates Foundation’s global health work, and Dr. Niranjan Bose, my chief scientific adviser.
Ask us anything about COVID-19 specifically or epidemics and pandemics more generally.
What?
There is lots of other information out there from doctors and scientists. We needed that and we got that. The point here is to get Bill's unique and valuable high-level perspective.
Nobody is 'waiting with bated breath for the pronouncements of the wealthy'; this is ridiculous and I think you'll know it if you read it back with even the slightest attempt to look at the situation neutrally.
Pandemics happen from time to time. Anyone can "call" the next pandemic.
BG is not an expert on any of this stuff and has nothing to add. We need less noise, not more, at times like this.
Think about it this way: had he done this, would it have made things better, worse, or no change?
And don't forget: had he looked into this, he would have realized that they were dramatically unprepared, and I suspect he would have been smart enough to assume that there was a possibility that the same state of affairs may exist in other cities, and then look into that.
Did this thought not cross his mind? It seems like an interesting question.
If he really called it he would be prepared. Right now it sounds like he was just repeating what he heard from others for the shock value
You give a presentation on pandemic - you are the richest guy on the planet, yet you have nothing that demonstrates that you took it seriously, that's not calling it
This can also go much worse than privacy concerns:
Year 2040: Now chips contain remote activated doses of poison, if you don't have good social credit or you are at the age of retirement(40) they can remote activate it and kill you.
Engineered systems can have various modes (operational, degraded, maintenance, etc.), bears can hibernate, some frogs can burrow for years in the ground waiting for better times, etc.
Our societies should also be able to switch modes to handle bad times, functioning under different laws until things get better, without all the drama that we see today.
"Injecting" money in the system to try to put it back to "normal" makes me think about a bear taking stimpacks to walk around in the winter looking for non-existent food.
Let's say there is a restaurant on a street corner. They have good food, people enjoy the vibe there and the decor is tasteful. Half a year a go they employed 15 people and the owner made a modest profit.
Now guests have stopped coming. But rent is still due and so are wages.
If somehow political leaders had the time to micro-manage what should they do about this situation? Should it stand empty so it's ready start serving people immediately as soon as corona situation is resolved? Should furniture be put in storage and the space be reused for something else in the mean time? Should the restaurant disappear to make room for something else? The employees should they be on standby? Or take on different roles while they wait?
And then having answered that question we can take the abstractions back, and ask how the outcome can be approximated by manipulating interest rates and helicopter money.
In fact, even, if you took the combined wealth of every single billionaire in the US and totaled it up (2.5 Trillion) and then gave it away to every US person (divide by 300M), over the 30 year period it took to earn all that money, you'd still only get about 250$ per person per year.
It's our first and only impuse: just spend more. Personally, I think a much better way is to find ways to spend less. How to find ways to provide for people with fewer costs.
Keep in mind, the 8 months they mention uses a lifetime of accumulated wealth: https://checkyourfact.com/2019/02/15/fact-check-wealth-billi...
Besides, it’s likely considering how few American regions are actually taking the steps needed to limit the spread of the virus that within a few months a factory opened anywhere in the US will be shut down to prevent the spread of the virus anyways.
While mask production ramps up, it would be essential to stop spreading the misinformation on official channels that masks don't work, and also teach people how to correctly wear them. There are lots of people on the streets with masks pulled down on their chin or covering their mouths only.
Everyone should wear a mask, and if they don't have a mask, everyone should be teached to create makeshift masks, because almost anything that is a barrier in front of your face, such as a scarf, will help with reducing the spread of the virus.
Most infections are either asymptomatic, or cause mild symptoms that are not necessarily identified as COVID-19, but those people are still spreading the virus, because government officials are telling them to not wear masks.
What's more twisted, those who do wear masks out of precaution are called out and sometimes attacked because of this misinformation.
And how long does it take to produce a safe, well tested vaccine that we are supposed to give to our kids?
Didn't we cover this in SARS-COV-1 and Ebola outbreak 1 and Ebola outbreak 2 and Ebola outbreak 3? It takes a while. Generally months. When one of these shows up, you'll hear some news about an expiremental vaccine and someone volunteering to get it, but it normally takes quite a while- -months- to get all the stuff in place to actually get it to your kids.
Betting on a vaccine swooping in to save isn't smart.
Per current rules, there's 14 months of monitoring involved before it is considered safe.
It's already been proven that biometrics are the gold standard for identification. You can't swap in someone else biometrics and fraudulently walk around as someone else. And you simply connect these biometrics to a cloud registry and go from there. Why wouldn't we just go with what works?
And if you don't consent, do you get locked out of the economy? Or do we hold you down and force inject you with a chip?
This implant doesn't make ANY sense and will systematize ID counterfeiting. Shame on Bill Gates. This should be laughed out of the room and then scolded as a human rights violation.
"Eventually we will have some digital certificates to show who has recovered or been tested recently or when we have a vaccine who has received it."
Either that means a biometrics being signed by 3rd parties or a chip being signed by 3rd parties. At best there are major privacy concerns.
But things get weird elsewhere when you have developers talking about "anonymously" tracking people for purposes of identifying contacts. Just because you swap IDs with something random doesn't make it anonymous or safe.
"Shit like this is why im a developer." - we have plenty of talent and a plethora of bad ideas
/s obviously. Although probably less ridiculous than other uses.
I do not expect people who believe this to react well if they literally have to get a microchip implant to be allowed to go into stores or to work. These sorts of beliefs are more common than you might expect in large parts of the country.
http://news.mit.edu/2019/storing-vaccine-history-skin-1218
The whole thing sounds absurd and a huge privacy violation, honestly. Their reasoning is that "..there is little infrastructure for storing medical records, so there’s often no easy way to determine who needs a particular vaccine."
So rather than invest in the ancient technology called paper and file cabinets, they need to embed a high-tech tattoo? Mobile phones are pretty ubiquitous in Africa; why not build a vaccine record system based on that instead?
As long as the marker has zero PII, just what vaccine was given, this seems harmless enough and vastly more helpful than the current paper system.
The potential for abuse is limited because you need to have the person in front of you, and then the only info is a vector of vaccine administered bits.
See Event 201 from 6 months ago: "The Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security in partnership with the World Economic Forum and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation hosted Event 201, a high-level pandemic exercise on October 18, 2019, in New York, NY. The exercise illustrated areas where public/private partnerships will be necessary during the response to a severe pandemic in order to diminish large-scale economic and societal consequences." (http://www.centerforhealthsecurity.org/event201/)
So basically as recently as last year he was simulating/preparing for the chaos we are experiencing now: "Event 201 simulates an outbreak of a novel zoonotic coronavirus transmitted from bats to pigs to people that eventually becomes efficiently transmissible from person to person, leading to a severe pandemic. The pathogen and the disease it causes are modeled largely on SARS, but it is more transmissible in the community setting by people with mild symptoms. ... There is no possibility of a vaccine being available in the first year. There is a fictional antiviral drug that can help the sick but not significantly limit spread of the disease. ... Since the whole human population is susceptible, during the initial months of the pandemic, the cumulative number of cases increases exponentially, doubling every week. And as the cases and deaths accumulate, the economic and societal consequences become increasingly severe." (http://www.centerforhealthsecurity.org/event201/scenario.htm...)
This sounds somewhat similar to what we're experiencing now, and it was Bill Gates who possessed the foresight to see this before anyone else. If anyone knows what's going on and what will happen in the coming future, it's him. Know when to follow. You can question his motives and intentions, but you must recognize his superior knowledge and preparedness.
The way I see it, what you have presented is a narrative. It could be 100% correct, it could be 100% incorrect, and it could be somewhere in between.
For the purposes of this exercise, let's assume it is true, or true enough.
Once a person holds a narrative such as this in their mind, it subsequently facilitates the ability to make a broad range of very precise predictions, both of the future, and the unknown in general. But don't forget: your mind is producing predictions, but sometimes these predictions have the nasty side effect of not being distinguishable from facts. Fields like psychology, neurology, etc have done significant work studying the particulars of this odd behavior.
The way I see it, what you have presented is a narrative. It could be 100% correct, it could be 100% incorrect, and it could be somewhere in between.
For the purposes of this exercise, let's assume it is true, or true enough.
Once a person holds a narrative such as this in their mind, it subsequently facilitates the ability to make a broad range of very precise predictions, both of the future, and the unknown in general. But don't forget: your mind is producing predictions, but sometimes these predictions have the nasty side effect of not being distinguishable from facts. Fields like psychology, neurology, etc have done significant work studying the particulars of this odd behavior.
Now, let's take an example of some predictions and think more rigorously:
"If anyone knows what's going on and what will happen in the coming future, it's him. Know when to follow. You can question his motives and intentions, but you must recognize his superior knowledge and preparedness."
I will clarify this a bit (please let me know if I've done this in a manner not to your liking):
- Bill Gates has a demonstrated track record of exceptional skill in the domain of pandemics.
- An event has occurred related to the domain of pandemics.
- Therefore, it logically follows that Bill Gates is the person who knows what's going on regarding this event.
- Therefore, it logically follows that Bill Gates plans should be followed, in their entirety.
Disclaimer: Yes, I do realize that I have taken the most uncharitable interpretation of your words possible, but that is my very point. I believe that if one desires to know the truth, uncharitable deconstruction of beliefs into discrete binary statements is the most valuable tool that humans have at our disposal. But rather than wield this impressive power in making the world a better place, it seems like instead people prefer to use it to engage in ideological arguments. Fiddling while Rome burns as they say.
And yes, I too see many obvious criticisms/shortcomings of this approach (thinking about reality in a highly skilled manner is a bit complicated, go figure) - again, I present this as just one piece of an overall larger puzzle that humanity should realize is sitting right in front of us, and has been for generations. It's waiting to be solved, but first you have to acknowledge its existence.
And finally, to be fair, you did note: "You can question his motives and intentions, but you must recognize his superior knowledge and preparedness". So, please think of this not as a criticism of you personally, but rather as an illustration of a larger generic principle.
To be honest (in return), the main intent of my post above is to inform critical readers about the mentioned pandemic simulation that was carried out in October of 2019, and allow them to consider for themselves what that implies. Just informing / expanding the conversation. What people think about BG is irrelevant to me, I just saw that it was the topic being discussed here. :) *edit: also I deliberately took the extreme stance/tone (TRUST BILL) because it seems obviously absurd and contradicts bigger picture critical thinking. Speculative tone (which would've been more honest) is always rejected as weak. So I say "Trust Bill, because x," when I actually want to say, "are you aware of x?" By taking a stance I'm being dishonest and inflammatory but generating discussion / thought and hopefully avoiding censorship and outright dismissal due to existing biases. Sole intention is to expand the overton, generate thought / discussion / awareness of fact. No one else in these comments brought up E201 and many likely haven't heard of it, but it is worthy of consideration and some may find it interesting!
Technically, it only appears to be naivete. I am extremely cognizant of the fact that people don't think using logic or facts, or care comprehensively about what is actually true.
> By taking a stance I'm being dishonest and inflammatory but generating discussion / thought and hopefully avoiding censorship and outright dismissal due to existing biases. Sole intention is to expand the overton, generate thought / discussion / awareness of fact. No one else in these comments brought up E201 and many likely haven't heard of it, but it is worthy of consideration and some may find it interesting!
Kudos for your efforts, the more the better.