Bill Gates on How the U.S. Can Course Correct Its COVID-19 Response: ‘You Wish Experts Were Taking Charge’

The U.S. domestic response to the COVID-19 pandemic thus far has been “weak,” Bill Gates believes. The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation co-chair and Microsoft co-founder told TIME senior health correspondent Alice Park during a TIME100 Talks discussion on Thursday that he’d give the U.S.’s COVID-19 response, “on a relative and absolute basis, not a passing grade.” But, he added, the U.S.’s funding for vaccine and therapeutic research “has been the best in the world,” so if it coordinates to share resources globally, the U.S. could “potentially score the highest” in that realm. During a global pandemic like COVID-19, Gates argued, governments must collaborate to ensure the virus is fully eradicated. The U.S. has historically led global responses to past health crises like smallpox or polio, he told Park, but has been less of a leader during COVID-19. Instead, countries that were exposed to SARS or MERS responded most quickly and “set a very strong model.” “There’s about six countries that immediately went to the private sector and said okay, ‘how do we get mass testing? We’ll commit to buy tests’,” he said. “That never happened in the U.S.” Read more: Mapping the Spread of the Coronavirus Outbreak Around the U.S. and the World The U.S. continues to face huge delays that make many tests “a waste of money,” he continued, adding that while...
Source: TIME: Health - Category: Consumer Health News Authors: Tags: Uncategorized COVID-19 News Desk TIME100 Talks Source Type: news