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During a speech for the Massachusetts Medical Society and the New England Journal of Medicine last week, Bill Gates warned an audience that humanity must prepare for “war” with a “global pandemic,” which he believes could kill 30 million people in the span of 6 months. Gates predicted that there is a “reasonable probability” that the world will experience something like this in the next 10-15 years.
While this is an alarming prediction, it is all entirely theoretical—there is no evidence that a massive outbreak is on the horizon, and there is currently no plague sweeping the planet, aside from cancer and heart disease.
The doomsday scenario that Gates laid out in his presentation was not based on a specific disease, and his numbers were not derived from any current studies, rather he used a computer-generated model that took data from a massive outbreak that occurred before the advent of modern medicine and sanitation, and scaled that data to the world’s current population.
The simulation, which can be seen below, was created by the Institute for Disease Modeling and is based on data from the 1918 flu pandemic that killed 50 million people.
“You might be wondering how real these doomsday scenarios really are. The fact that a deadly global pandemic has not occurred in recent history shouldn’t be mistaken for evidence that a deadly pandemic will not occur in the future,”Gates said.
However, it is important to point out that these predictions rest upon data that is 100 years old, and advancements in medicine and sanitation have led to a world that is less vulnerable to these types of outbreaks. Also, our species has learned many lessons about how to deal with diseases since the outbreak of the Spanish Flu, from hygiene to quarantine protocols, societies are much safer from the spread of illnesses than they were 100 years ago.
During his presentation, Gates attempted to make the case that we are still not prepared enough.
“There’s one area though where the world isn’t making much progress and that’s pandemic preparedness,” Gates said.
Next, he warned of the possibility that a terrorist could genetically engineer this type of virus.
“The next epidemic could originate on the computer screen of a terrorist intent on using genetic engineering to create a synthetic version of the smallpox virus or a super contagious and deadly strain of the flu.Whether it occurs by a quirk of nature or at the hand of a terrorist, epidemiologists say a fast-moving airborne pathogen could kill more than 30 million people in less than a year—and they say there is a reasonable probability the world will experience such an outbreak in the next 10 to 15 years,” Gates said.
To prevent this type of scenario from occurring, Gates seems to only be interested in one solution—vaccines.
“We need to invest in other approaches, like antiviral drugs and antibody therapies that can be stockpiled or rapidly manufactured to stop the spread of pandemic diseases or treat people who have been exposed,” he said.
In most mainstream media reports, Gates’ interest in vaccines is painted as a strictly philanthropic venture, but it is rarely mentioned that he is heavily invested in multiple drug companies and that the pharmaceutical industry has become his new business since stepping down as CEO of Microsoft. Not long after leaving the company, Gates sold almost half a billion dollar’s worth of Microsoft stock in a single year and began buying up stock for every major drug company, including Eli Lilly, Merk, and Pfizer.
In the years since, Gates has continued to pour money into Big Pharma through his tax-exempt foundations and filled his foundation with executives from the industry. That money is then turned around and spent on vaccination programs in third world countries where dangerous vaccines are tested on poverty-stricken people in the name of charity.
Millions of dollars are spent on the vaccines programs, which are sometimes successful, sometimes not, and other times they go horribly wrong. For example, in 2015 The Gates Foundation faced a trial in India after numerous children were killed and injured in a vaccine trial.
Even worse, the children and their families had no clue that they were being used as test subjects, they were told that they would be given a new wonder drug that would protect them from malaria and other diseases. In reality, these children were given an untested cocktail of chemicals that were proven to be unsafe, during involuntary human experiments which they were unsuspecting participants in.
Sadly, in the case of many of these poverty-stricken regions, the money that the Gates Foundation puts towards vaccine programs would actually be much better spent on raising the standard of living through improving infrastructure, sanitation services and access to clean water and food.
Regardless of one’s opinions on Bill Gates or the vaccine controversy, his ties to the pharmaceutical industry must not be ignored, especially when he is making apocalyptic claims about a coming outbreak.
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