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Bill Gates details how his foundation shifted focus “almost entirely” to addressing COVID-19

Microsoft founder Bill Gates spoke to the Financial Times (via Fast Company) about how the work of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation has shifted “almost entirely” to working on addressing COVID-19, in the interest of making the post impact possible in the ongoing effort to contain and combat the global coronavirus pandemic. Gates told the FT that the spread of COVID-19 could have dire economic consequences which will result in more suffering globally than anyone could’ve anticipated, hence the need to address it with the full weight of the resources of one of the world’s most well-capitalized charitable organizations.

The Bill & Melinda Gates foundation has been funding vaccine trials, clinical studies and basic research related to drug and therapy development for COVID-19 since basically the disease debuted on the world scene. It means that the exiting mandate of the foundation, which includes seeking to eradicate polio and AIDS worldwide, will be temporarily slowed or paused while the organization focuses its resources on the pandemic, but Gates’ decision to focus the group’s significant resources here should only emphasize the seriousness of the situation.

The foundation’s temporary shift is actually, long-term, the best way it can serve its core goals, since the global impact of the coronavirus crisis is likely to have repercussions for every aspect of human life, including access to medical care, testing and therapies, not to mention food and basic necessities. Curbing the disease’s spread early could have the most significant impact in economies ill-prepared to deal with the fallout, and any impact there will eventually result in better ability to work on eradicating those other diseases in a reasonable timeline, instead of undermining local infrastructure and allowing them a longer foothold.

In a 2015 TED talk, Gates predicted the coming of a global outbreak and urged global health organizations and governments to come together to prepare for what to do in case of a large, widespread contagion. Gates was working mostly from the perspective of the 2014 Ebola outbreak, which exposed many of the existing gaps and flaws in the system, but his advice seems prescient in retrospect.

Unfortunately, Gates has been subject to a lot of spreading misinformation and bogus conspiracy theory nonsense owing to heightened paranoia and activity among groups that normally peddle in this kind of falsehood. Based on this interview, Gates seems to essentially expect that as something of a matter of course for high-profile individuals, however, and it doesn’t appear to be impacting the foundation’s ability to focus on potential fixes.

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