After pandemic warning, Bill Gates warns about climate change, bioterrorism
What's the story
Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates has warned the world about the next disaster. Gates said bioterrorism and climate change could be the next biggest threats to humanity.
Gates had issued a warning about a deadly virus claiming millions of lives back in 2015. Five years later, the coronavirus pandemic took the world by storm, infecting over 100 million worldwide and killing 2.28 million.
Details
Gates interacted with YouTuber Derek Muller
YouTuber Derek Muller, who runs the popular channel 'Veritasium', on Thursday uploaded a video of his interaction with Gates.
During their interaction, Muller referred to Gates' past warning about a highly infectious virus and asked what the next disaster could be.
Gates warned about the worsening crisis of climate change and bioterrorism, which he feels people don't like to talk about.
Quote
'Annual death would be higher than COVID-19 pandemic'
Gates said in the video interaction, "One is climate change. Every year that would be a death toll even greater than we have had in this pandemic."
He added, "Bio-terrorism. Somebody who wants to cause damage could engineer a virus and that means the cost, the chance of running into this is more than the naturally-caused epidemics like the current one."
Context
In 2015 TED talk, Gates warned about deadly viral outbreak
Back in 2015, Gates addressed his TED talk titled 'The next outbreak? We're not ready'.
"If anything kills over 10 million people in the next few decades, it's likely to be a highly infectious virus rather than a war," he had said in his talk. "Not missiles, but microbes."
The clip had gone viral last year as the COVID-19 pandemic took hold.
Other remarks
'Could I have been more persuasive?'
Gates told Muller, "There's no good feeling that comes with something like this: 'I told you so.'" Gates said he now wonders whether he could have been more persuasive before.
When asked whether humans will be able to stop the next pandemic, having had the experience with COVID-19, Gates responded in the negative.
"There will be more pandemics," he said.