Bill Gates, now known best for warning the world five years ago about a coming pandemic, delivered more predictions on Wednesday about Covid-19, some bound to disappoint and others optimistic.
Robert Delaney writes in the South China Morning Post that the bad news is that an effective Covid-19 vaccine is not likely until somewhere around September 2021, and the U.S. will not be able to ease up on social distancing measures that have shut broad swathes of its economy until the end of May this year without risking a resurgence in cases.
The good news, according to Gates, is that the world will not likely face another pandemic after Covid-19 because lessons learned about testing and surveillance, and internationally financed medical solutions now under way to respond to the current crisis, will be able to contain future human pathogens before they reach the “global, tragic scale” of the current one.