HN Theater @HNTheaterMonth

Yeah Bill Gates - terrible guy. Spending money trying to eradicate diseases that kill poor people. What's worse, here's him in 2015 (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Af6b_wyiwI) wasting money and faffing on about some pandemic. As if that's going to happen, and even if it does the pandemic won't affect rich countries in any way.

⬐ Tiktaalik

You're falling for his scheme hook line and sinker.

He spends a minor portion of his extreme wealth on good causes and charitywashes his bad reputation into being a "good guy."

We then don't talk about the fact that we could go remarkably further on the same course if we took a much larger bulk of his wealth and put it toward similar objectives of reducing poverty, disease etc.

This is of course nothing new. Robber barons did the same thing, which is why there's a Carnegie Library in my town etc.

⬐ JoshuaDavid

> He spends a minor portion of his extreme wealth on good causes and charitywashes his bad reputation into being a "good guy."

Bill and Melinda Gates have pledged 95% of their wealth to charity. So far, they have given away about $45B, and have a remaining wealth of about $110B -- even if they didn't give away any more than that, that's still over 30%, which I don't know if I'd consider a "minor portion".

How do you envision going significantly farther towards the objective of reducing poverty, disease etc than the Gates Foundation?

⬐ adriancr

What's surprising is that he gave away 49% of microsoft which would have made him the first trillionaire at current valuations...

I hope that was given as stock to the foundation...

I cant even fathom those sums let alone giving them to charity and putting it to good use...

⬐ Tiktaalik

The relevant thing is that if the public sufficiently taxed gates' wealth, how it would be spent to reduce poverty and disease, would be democratically driven, instead of being driven by the interests and opinions of one man.

⬐ solipsism

We then don't talk about the fact that we could go remarkably further on the same course if we took a much larger bulk of his wealth and put it toward similar objectives of reducing poverty, disease etc.

Who could? You and I could? The government could? Honestly asking, I don't really know what you're saying. If that money went to the government a very small percentage of it would be used to reduce poverty and disease. A much higher percentage of it would be used to fund the military.

⬐ Tiktaalik

wow you're right I guess better things just aren't possible.

⬐ solipsism

It's possible. Like it's possible you will win the lottery tomorrow.

I wouldn't count on it though.

⬐ AlexandrB

Here's an alternative perspective: https://newrepublic.com/article/162000/bill-gates-impeded-gl.... Bill Gates may want to eradicate disease, but he's not willing to give up on IP protection maximalism while doing so. Whether his approach is net-positive or net-negative remains to be seen.

⬐ Ambolia

Does he want to eradicate disease? Or does he want to influence the Health Markets heavily on which he probably has a lot of money invested, and make sure they move in directions that are beneficial to him, or that at least don't reduce his power.

Maybe he doesn't even tell himself that, but works like that subconsciously.

⬐ adriancr

He'd be a a lot richer if he didn't start giving away the Microsoft stock he owned. (think 49% of Microsoft at current 2T valuation)

It's doubtful he has ulterior motives as you say.

⬐ jb775

The world would be better off if he didn't exist.

⬐ dasil003

Sure I’ll give credit for his recent philanthropy, but the man crushed a generation of innovative software companies under his heel. Fortunately he didn’t see the web coming and failed to stop Linux, but make no mistake was not a good person for most of his career, and we are still feeling the effects of the damage he did to the software world.

⬐ jvanderbot

Being competitive and successful does not make someone a bad person. Being on the other side of open source does not either. You can't judge a person's character by these things.

If you want to focus on just his business, initially, Gates was a tech hero, upsetting the incumbents as much as any modern disruptor. His company came to be known as a villian, was itself upset, and is going through a reinvention period during which I think they are doing really good things. But none of that should be about his character. He played the game and won, then got out and focused on more important things.

⬐ tomxor

> Being anti-competitive and successful makes someone a bad person. You can judge a person's character by these things.

Corrected that for you.

In all seriousness: I think Bill Gates is probably sincere in his philanthropy, but that the reason is emotional maturity and reflection... that and he's sitting on a fuck ton of money that one man can only squander if not put to better use.

⬐ jvanderbot

I'm fine if we disagree on this. I go back and forth myself. Ultimately, I believe we're applying too much hindsight to Gates middle years. The anti trust suits were well founded. Someday we'll demonize the Google guys and Zuck and everyone else in adtech. That's good. They played the game, won, we didn't like the outcome, so we change the game. That doesn't make them evil either, it makes them products of a system we asked for and supported and along the way they brought immense value. What became evil in all these cases was not the people, necessarily.

What gets me is people who so vehemently hate that they talk about killing the person, not the business.

⬐ aerique

People are already, rightfully, being very critical of Google, Zuckerberg and others. Just like we were back in the day of Microsoft.

Are we going to applaud Zuckerberg in 20 years when he's going to use his money for good? He could already be doing good right now, instead of being a net-negative to the world, but he chooses to make billions instead.

⬐ Spivak

I know we’re in a form of technology people but to put it bluntly — nobody cares. Microsoft is a massive massive successes story for the US in which a US company has a dominant position in the world market for software.

You forget that outside of tech everything that MS did that we rail on about will be remembered as good business. Nobody except people on the inside have these idealistic views about software and freedom and all that.

⬐ xivzgrev

I don’t agree - it was well known at the time. The Simpsons even had an episode about his competitiveness

https://youtu.be/H27rfr59RiE

⬐ seabird

Microsoft also gave countless thousands of people the opportunity to get into the field. I know it's easy to shit on them now, because we can look back and say that just about everybody then was an idiot by today's standards, but if you compare what your options were, Microsoft was by and away the best option for a lot of people getting started. I have an interest in what computers were like around 2000 (I didn't live it at the time, so I don't have any warm, fuzzy feelings towards any of these systems in particular), and as far as I've seen, you had three options:

1.) Proprietary UNIX vendors. Cheap workstations? Fuck you. OS without a support contract? Fuck you. First party compiler? Fuck you. These started to improve after 2000 with ports of open source tools, but most people would realistically be in way over their head price-wise unless they were accessing these systems through a university or workplace.

2.) Open source UNIX and UNIX-like systems. Linux was still pretty rough around the edges, and BSD derivatives were still pretty widespread. All said and done, you had to know these existed, know how to be involved in the community, and deal with the reality that the money just wasn't there yet. These options were not without compromise -- it would be years before Linux began making inroads in the "serious" deployment market.

3.) Microsoft. They did shitty things, but it was possible to get affordable development tools on affordable (and actually quite performant, all things considered) hardware, instead of needing tens of thousands of dollars for option 1 or being in the right place and time for option 2. Windows, VB, etc. causes lots of moaning and groaning today, but it had to have been magical at the time.

Give them all a try on period accurate hardware, one after another. You will become acutely aware why people put up with Microsoft.

⬐ erik_seaberg

I agree that most UNIX vendors short-sightedly priced themselves entirely out of the PC market, but Microsoft’s threats are the reason OEMs didn’t dare to sell PCs with OS/2 or BeOS preinstalled.

⬐ wedesoft

Microsoft tried to spread FUD about Linux patents and by trying to scare the industry into buying patent licenses from Novell (which had acquired SuSE).

⬐ anthk

Eh, bullshit. By year 2000-2002 you could install Mandrake and SuSE with ease. And Windows and VC++ were expensive as fuck. In comparison, Mandrake was 30 EUR (~$35), which was a bargain. Also, later you could get the 4DVD Debian release for 20 EUR.

⬐ esyir

As of 2021, the year of the linux desktop still ain't here. PC users still choose windows over linux now, and this is after god know how many enhancements.

In the 2000s, getting linux to work with wifi was a mess of command line commands and other PITAs that no normal users would put up with.

⬐ anthk

In year 2000 and until 2003-2005 no one cared about wireless.

"Global Catastrophic Risk Survey", 2008 [pdf]

http://www.global-catastrophic-risks.com/docs/2008-1.pdf

Includes discussion of a "biggest natural pandemic".

Posted to HN, if not discussed, on Oct 2, 2016.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12623582

The question of GCR has been raised numerous other times on HN, though admittedly more recently of late:

https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu...

Infectious disease features prominantly among discussions of GCR:

https://web.archive.org/web/20120912020526/http://gcrinstitu...

Even software executives have suggested concern, this example from 5 years ago:

https://youtube.com/watch?v=6Af6b_wyiwI

As has the US military, from 2017:

https://www.darpa.mil/program/pandemic-prevention-platform

Economic impacts of pandemic have seen significant scholarly treatment, here looking at 1990-2018:

https://scholar.google.com/scholar?as_ylo=1990&as_yhi=2018&q...

Less black swan than head-buried ostrich, it might appear.

Gates gave a prescient TED talk in 2015 [1] in which he describes the risk of a global pandemic and the general lack of preparedness. The Gates foundation has also been working for years to help eradicate diseases like polio and malaria [2][3]. Given his expertise in this area, it would seem worthwhile to listen to what he has to say rather than dismissing him as just a "billionaire industrialist."

[1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Af6b_wyiwI

[2]: https://fortune.com/2018/04/18/bill-gates-foundation-malaria...

[3]: https://www.businessinsider.com/bill-gates-letter-eradicate-...

He totally saw this coming from a mile away and actively tried to warn the world about it. Years ago.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Af6b_wyiwI

We’ve known that pandemics were going to get more likely as international travel got faster and cheaper, and population density rose and absolute population numbers rose. These factors have been part of the horror stories that epidemiologists tell each other late at night when the lights are out:

“so it was a normal year, and airlines reduced the cost of India to USA flights by 20%,”

horrified gasps (the audience knows where this story is going)

Pandemic might have seemed improbable to you as a layperson, but the medical community has been bracing for this for decades. The less seriously you take it, the less seriously your politicians take it and the less seriously pandemic preparation gets funded.

https://youtu.be/6Af6b_wyiwI

The failure goes well beyond just the federal government too.

One example being NYC leaders and even health officials encouraging New Yorkers go participate in parades and other large gatherings through Feb and even into March, with messages of defiance against Coronavirus concerns:

https://mobile.twitter.com/wesyang/status/124303311804449997...

Edit: Removed ventilator comment as that specific claim seems to be misleading, and it's not something particular to NY. Many governments weren't prepared for a surge.

The U.S. as a whole had plenty of advanced warning about ventilator[1] and pandemic preparedness[2].

1. https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/disaster-medicine-an...

2. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Af6b_wyiwI

⬐ ardy42

> New York was warned years ago that they didn't have enough ventilators and had the opportunity to stock up, but chose not to.

That's misleading.

https://www.politifact.com/factchecks/2020/mar/25/donald-tru...:

> A 2015 New York state report said that in the case of a “severe” pandemic, the state would be short about 16,000 ventilators during the peak week. But the report did not recommend buying 16,000 ventilators [emphasis mine], and did not indicate whether the state was at a fiscal position to purchase them.

> The state did not plan to increase its ventilator stockpile because it anticipated that in the event of a severe crisis, there would be shortage of trained staff to operate them and demand would outweigh any emergency stockpile.

> The report said the state had to balance the likely ventilator shortage with the need for adequate funding for current and ongoing health care expenses.

And even if New York had bought them, they'd still be significantly short. Apparently current projections say they'll need 30,000 (https://www.cnbc.com/2020/03/24/gov-cuomo-says-new-york-need...).

⬐ anbop

I'm sure there are 16,000 people that would be thankful that you were 14,000 ventilators short instead of 30,000.

⬐ ardy42

> I'm sure there are 16,000 people that would be thankful that you were 14,000 ventilators short instead of 30,000.

Yeah, but that's with the benefit of hindsight. And ultimately, the idea that NY should have bought those ventilators back then is a deeply political cheap shot indented to distract people from the current administration's own lack of preparedness.

⬐ lonelappde

The Health Commissioner on Feb 9 was still pretty early. That's 8 weeks ago, ancient history in this pandemic.

On Feb 25, over 2 weeks CDC said covid-19 was detected in the US (from travelers back from Wuhan) and wasn't a risk for spreading among the general public.

The flu is here every year but we don't cancel parades.

De Blasio on Mar 2 was a lot later.

Because he's quite knowledgeable on the subject matter of pandemics.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Af6b_wyiwI

It's not really about wealth, though. No one is asking or cares what the Walton heirs would have to say.

It's the fact that Bill is smarter than the people in charge of our institutions. And he has a lot of experience in this domain. And has been warning about exactly this problem for many years. Indeed he warned that pandemics were our biggest blindspot and threat.

E.g., See his TED talk from 2015: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Af6b_wyiwI

⬐ dwaltrip

I don't think it's that he is smarter.

I would bet that plenty of people in the relevant agencies were fully aware of how unprepared we were, and that the decision makers were simply unconvinced that is was important enough oe politically expedient.

⬐ logjammin

Put aside for a second the fact that being rich enough from word processing software to surround yourself with experts and repeat what they tell you does not (necessarily) make you an expert. Apart from that, I agree with the thrust of what you're saying: he's not the Waltons, and he's funded meaningful public health work.

The point I'm trying to make in my original comment isn't about BG himself, it's exactly about "the people in charge of our institutions". Rereading it, I didn't make this as clear as possible, so let me take another stab:

We think of ourselves as an advanced democracy (or democratic republic) and economy. We certainly pay for that in taxes and in other ways (obviously we're not Nordic in terms of income tax, but still). But when it's go-time for that advanced democracy, for the institutions and experts we pay to train through years of schooling in public universities and then pay to command highly specialized bodies at local, state, and federal levels, their performance is, excuse my language, so fucking dismal that the vaunted CDC cannot make a working test, that there are not enough latex gloves in that advanced democracy to keep doctors and nurses from getting sick ... their performance is so dismal and we're so untrusting of the basic decency and competence of our experts and elected officials that we crowd into a Reddit AMA to hear a software magnate maybe have a better solution ... Is that not just bizarre to you? Infuriating? Sad?

I fully grant that I may be alone in feeling this way. On some level I'm reacting strongly to the fact that the country I immigrated to as a teenager is revealing itself to be profoundly third-world in certain ways - like, this isn't what I thought I signed up for. Like I said earlier, there's something truly funny about it at the same time that it's terribly sad. (One funny thing is that the solution the guy comes up with is "let's put a microchip in everyone!".) Don't mean to impose my views on anyone, and again, I'm not saying Gates has enabled, via Windows wealth, zero good in the world. It's not about Gates; it's about us.

⬐ jiggawatts

You're not the only one! My experience of simply growing up was this in a nutshell.

In the last year of primary school, I was shocked that our teacher was so bad at basic science that he let me, an 11-year-old student run the class. We had this neat physics "kit" with magnets, simple electrical circuits, and an easy to follow instruction leaflet. I simply followed the instructions and helped other students. I remember feeling shocked that the teacher couldn't follow these simple instructions himself. Plug the blue wire in the "A" socket. That kind of thing.

Then in high-school we had specialist teachers. The maths teacher who actually knew maths, the history teacher who actually knew history, and so forth. Still, it was fun to ask probing questions to see what the limits of their knowledge was.

At University... wow! They had electron microscopes! Super computers! A chip manufacturing lab! The professors were often actual researchers, with time on the Hubble telescope! I vividly remember a computer networking class where we used matrix exponentiation to estimate the maximum total throughput of an arbitrary network topology.

The whole time I was thinking to myself: If primary school was shit, high school was okay, and University is such a huge step up from that, surely when I get out of here into the "corporate world" it'll be amazing.

What a shock I was in for!

The real world was a spectacular step down. It was worse than the primary school. At least that teacher knew his limits, admitted them, and delegated to someone who knew what to do.

This doesn't happen in the real world! The manager has to save face. He has to "control the messaging". The issue doesn't exist if it's not reported. As long as the auditors don't find out, it's not really a problem. It doesn't matter if the computer network is slow as molasses, as long as it technically meets the requirement specification, no matter how badly. Nobody tries to do anything well. Hardly anything is optimised. Nothing is measured, certainly not scientifically.

This is just so sad to me.

Back at University I regularly used Wolfram Mathematica to fit complex, non-linear equations to measurements, factoring in errors and everything. The last time I found the excuse to do this at work was two years ago, which was five full years after the previous opportunity to do something scientific, rational, and evidence-based.

Literally just yesterday I was at an emergency services department gearing up for work-from-home. The users were complaining that their sessions were slow. Well... no shit. Of course it's slow. The data centre network is for some reason running at 1Mbps effective on some subnets. They are double-hopping unnecessarily because nobody bothered to read the manual on their remote access solution. They have more than $500K in software and hardware and it's markedly worse than my own remote access to my home PC that cost me nothing. All for the want of a few button presses and a couple of hours investigating why they're getting 0.1% of the rated throughput on their gear.

These very same people are the type in charge. They run the government, the hospitals, the emergency services. You vote for them, and they decide the laws, the budget, and policy. They control the armed forces and the electricity.

I'm shocked that anything works at all, and increasingly I suspect that it does so only because of the unsung heroic efforts of a tiny, silent minority...

⬐ samsonradu

> I'm shocked that anything works at all, and increasingly I suspect that it does so only because of the unsung heroic efforts of silent minority...

I also have the sentiment that many organizations/processes are deeply rotten and dysfunctional.

The only explanation I can find for it is that the society/people are extremely resilient and adaptive - much more than it seems. One of the other days I was watching a WW1 documentary, seeing all those scenes with men fighting in the trenches for months and many who were lucky enough not to be killed came back.

Meanwhile I was thinking to myself - Fuck, if I don't have coffee and some food by noon I'm completely useless. The reality however is that under those circumstances people change and adapt. And it works the same in modern society - there are people living on the streets for many many years, under very harsh conditions. Good or bad, working or not things just move on.

⬐ ManuelKiessling

> We think of ourselves as an advanced democracy

The US Americans may think that they are an advanced democracy, but betting that the Western European societies see the US as a special case of a third world country or failed state is not exactly a risky bet (albeit one that cannot be validated, I’m afraid).

And no, not „because Trump“. Trump is not the reason that the US is the laughingstock of the civilized world, it is the proof that the judgement of the civilized world was warranted all along.

Don‘t get me wrong: many US Americans are very fine people. Some parts of your industry are really impressive. Lots of notable achievements in science. But „the US“ as a nation, and as a society?

There’s nothing we can look up to anymore.

⬐ amorroxic

Man, don't beat yourself up. Americans are great people and not that bad of a society now. (someone in a WE society). Hang in there, we'll bicker after :)

⬐ beatgammit

I really don't understand this whole perspective. Europeans seem to come from a perspective of government protecting and providing for its people, which can be seen at least partially by people putting up with royal families throughout Europe. The US comes from the perspective that government can be a huge force for evil, so we should limit its ability to violate our rights. Other cultures come from different perspectives.

I live in the US largely because I was born here and partly because I don't like the perspective in Europe or E. Asia. I guess I feel the same way about Europe as Europe feels about the US, though if I were in control, I'd probably make some changes that Europeans would agree with (open borders, for one).

Instead of bickering about who is backwards, how about we just work together on things of mutual interest, like increasing free trade and freedom of movement? Name-calling isn't doing anyone any favors. Ideally, you should be able to live where you feel the most comfortable, and you should never be stuck because your government made poor choices.

⬐ curiousgeorgio

Perhaps this should be viewed as just more evidence that in many cases, private enterprise tends to be more productive than government-sponsored initiatives.

Granted, that may not always be the case (China being a counterexample here), but one must also be aware of the costs (in terms of freedom) that are associated with government control of such a large portion of citizens' lives and the means of production. If that's what you happen to prefer, you're free to move to a nation that embraces communism. You might fare better in a pandemic, but you might also get locked up (or worse) for saying something that your government doesn't agree with.

As for me, I prefer capitalism and the freedom it gives us to either hoard wealth or (as Gates demonstrates) do tremendous good - not by force, but out of genuine altruism. I'd bet on the success of a Gates-sponsored healthcare solution over a government-sponsored one any day of the week.

⬐ Kaze404

> As for me, I prefer capitalism and the freedom it gives us to either hoard wealth or (as Gates demonstrates) do tremendous good

Who is "us" here? Surely you don't think a significant portion of the world population can choose to hoard wealth.

⬐ curiousgeorgio

As an American, the freedom is mine (as it is for other US citizens) to do what I choose with the money I earn, regardless of the amount. Wealth is relative, after all.

⬐ Kaze404

Is it though? I don't know about stats in the US, but I'd be surprised if the majority of the people earned enough money to choose what to do with it after basic human expenses. Unless you count surviving as a choice, but at that point anything is.

⬐ foldr

>I'd bet on the success of a Gates-sponsored healthcare solution over a government-sponsored one any day of the week.

So you'd bet that the US is going to deal with the pandemic more effectively than China has? That doesn't seem likely at the moment.

⬐ curiousgeorgio

> So you'd bet that the US is going to deal with the pandemic more effectively than China has?

No, that's not what I said.

⬐ foldr

So Gates is not actually going to do anything to help with this pandemic? If so, how is he an example of the effectiveness of private enterprise as compared to government?

⬐ curiousgeorgio

> So Gates is not actually going to do anything to help with this pandemic?

Again, not what I said. Contributing resources and expertise is not an all-or-nothing scenario. Each dollar spent by Gates fighting COVID-19 will (in my opinion) be significantly more productive than each dollar spent by the US government. But that doesn't mean he's the only force participating in the fight, nor is his contribution insignificant.

If you have an argument to make, please make it, but I'd ask you politely to refrain from straw man arguments or insisting on false dichotomies.

⬐ foldr

>I'd bet on the success of a Gates-sponsored healthcare solution over a government-sponsored one any day of the week.

This doesn't sound like you are talking about dollar-for-dollar effectiveness.

Nor does it make sense to suggest that people move to Communist countries, if that's what you meant.

⬐ godzulu

Be effective, do you mean by imprisoning and silencing physicians, insisting they had things under control, allowing 11m people to continue with new year, mass celebrations, allowing out of country travel, silencing Taiwanese doctors complaints to the WHO and strong arming the WHO to declare, as late as January 14, 2020 that it is not passable thru human to human transmission?

“Preliminary investigations conducted by the Chinese authorities have found no clear evidence of human-to-human transmission of the novel #coronavirus (2019-nCoV) identified in #Wuhan, #China,” the WHO tweeted.

⬐ foldr

No, I just mean that China has had more success than, say, Italy in stopping the spread of the disease.

⬐ thawaway1837

Considering the person who is surrounded by the best experts, and should be in charge, spends his press conferences contradicting what those very experts just said minutes ago, we are kind of forced to listen to other people who have access to the best knowledge here, and that’s usually the wealthy.

⬐ logjammin

Right, yes, exactly: my point is that that state of affairs you describe is fucking bananas. That's all.

⬐ FuckButtons

Yeah, it is, but that’s no more true now than it was before Coronavirus. Trumps presidency has laid bare just how enfeebled American democracy is.

⬐ doener

"If anything kills over 10 millione people in the next few decades, it's most likely to be a highly infectious virus rather than a war."

⬐ dang

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22575745

⬐ merricksb

Discussed 3 days ago:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22575745

We are not prepared, but there was people warning about it. See this Ted talk from Bill Gates, 5 years ago. It's impressive how the details are similar to coronavirus.

https://youtu.be/6Af6b_wyiwI

⬐ facethrowaway

How is this some sort of prescient statement? There have been movies made about this exact issue for decades. On a societal level, it is a bug marked WONTFIX similar to preparing for asteroid impact, the next Big One in SF (come on guys, we arent prepared for it), the next volcano, large scale terrorist attack using chemical weapons, and so on.

It seems nobody has a memory to remember that Microsoft hobbled local governments attempts to build and use open source software instead of paying their tax. In a way, you’re basically thanking Bill Gates for redistributing a small fraction of the money he’s stolen from global governments through the Microsoft monopoly.

If you think this is a conspiracy theory go talk to IT staff who worked in the German government in the late 90s.

⬐ dm319

I know it seems unfair to hold Bill Gates forever unable to atone for those business practices, and I applaud him for what he is doing now. However, I still think microsoft was a net loss to society.

⬐ wintorez

Why I feel in a few years we will be watching Independence Day and Oblivion in our caves and thinking "They warned us, but we didn't listen"?

⬐ Ididntdothis

“How is this some sort of prescient statement? There have been movies made about this exact issue for decades. On a societal level, it is a bug marked WONTFIX similar to preparing for asteroid impact, the next Big One in SF (come on guys, we arent prepared for it), the next volcano, large scale terrorist attack using chemical weapons, and so on.”

Exactly. A lot of people know the risks but we are not willing to pay for preparedness.

⬐ wintorez

We're not ready for anything, because most of our decision-makers are short-sighted, and populist. Long-term decision making requires long-term thinking which is not compatible with our current economic and political models.

⬐ pintxo

Let’s add our media model in here as well, although it’s also a subset of our economic model.

⬐ notRobot

Full title:

Bill Gates: The next outbreak? We're not ready. (2015) [video]

Also watch: What Bill Gates is afraid of: https://youtu.be/9AEMKudv5p0

⬐ notRobot

"In fact, if there's one positive thing that can come out of the Ebola epidemic, it's that it can serve as an early warning – a wake-up call – to get ready. If we start now, we can be ready for the next epidemic"

He said this in 2015. No one listened.

⬐ Ididntdothis

This reminds me of the financial crisis in 2008. A ton of people knew what was going on and issued warnings but not many listened. What I don’t like is the effort to make some people like Gates into heroes that saw what nobody else saw. Public health experts warned for decades that we are not prepared but nobody wanted to pay for action.

⬐ 8bitsrule

I wonder how many of those experts got on a stage to give 'we, the people' that warning. The media will hide that stuff on page nnn because it's not popular.

Whatever I may think of Gates' past actions, I applaud his educational and other-directed actions ... they're not about consolidating power or fortune. Carping and suspicion about anyone's generosity is bottom-feeding.

⬐ bdcravens

> What I don’t like is the effort to make some people like Gates into heroes that saw what nobody else saw

Though I suspect if it was Elon Musk who said the same thing, there would be no shortage of hero worship.

⬐ plankers

Instead we get this:

https://mobile.twitter.com/elonmusk/status/12360294490421985...

⬐ slowmovintarget

Have we found his underwater lair yet? He's trying very hard to be a comic-book mega-industrialist. But his kind of character seems far more like a Bond villain. Dr. Not Yet?

⬐ throwaway5752

That's not true. Obama gave the US government processes for dealing with one. That was the function of the NSC, and specifically the pandemic response unit. It was in response to the Ebola outbreak. https://www.nbcnews.com/health/health-news/trump-cuts-nation... has a reasonable history.

The problem is that people are dumb and forgetful.

⬐ jjeaff

Correct. And Trump completely disbanded the Pandemic response team in 2018.

⬐ sitkack

Do you have something linkable?

⬐ esturk

Did you open the link two posts above yours?

⬐ stareatgoats

FYI

https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2020/3/10/1926075/-Trump-St...

⬐ mattnewton

https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/trump-fire-pandemic-team/

https://thehill.com/homenews/administration/487581-bolton-de...

https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2020/03/i-dont-know-anyt...

In 2018 the people in charge of the program were forced out, and Trump repeatedly (unsuccessfully) sought to cut the CDC budget (and the administration is currently still advocated for budget cuts after declaring an emergency, but who knows how long before this guy is thrown under the bus[2])

This was widely condemned but I don’t remember much media coverage. In 2019 a bipartisan group of experts petitioned the president to reinstate those positions and not to cut funding[0], and recently at the start of the outbreak in February senators wrote a letter to the head of the NSC to please appoint people for the pandemic preparedness roles[1], but so far nothing.

[0] https://csis-prod.s3.amazonaws.com/s3fs-public/publication/1...

[1] https://www.schatz.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/021320%20NSC%20N...

[2] https://thehill.com/policy/finance/486817-trump-budget-chief...

⬐ chiefalchemist

We've known for quite some time that globalization and air travel creates risks. Those who benefit from that model haven't been concerned; profits have been priority #1. The rest of have been complacent and complicit.

I'm surprised anyone is surprised.

⬐ yyy888sss

The whole world benefits from these things. The rewards far outweigh the risks.

⬐ fulafel

Yep, it's worrying how little people question the continuing growth of air travel given both its climate and public health damages.

⬐ buboard

i wonder if this crisis will set up a long-term discussion about this issue from now on

⬐ slowmovintarget

I'm more interested in whether we address supply-chain and infrastructure fragility. Not for economic reasons, but for overall survival and quality of life issues.

Imagine this sort of thing going on contemporaneously with people fleeing coastal cities due to flooding.

⬐ buboard

not sure how fragile it is, frankly logistics is very robust (and has been since the middle ages). Even with centralization it survives multiple trade wars at this moment. And it depends a lot on information tech which is also robust.

⬐ Ididntdothis

I think anybody who worked in that area and was honest would have said the same thing.

⬐ buboard

Maybe that's why its not crazy to consider conspiracy theories about the nature of this virus. It would be beneficial for humanity in the long term to shift e.g. from cyberwarfare defense spending to biowarfare defense. The side benefits of the first are at best marginal , while a massive shift of investment to biodefense would be life-changing

⬐ breatheoften

What percentage of bio defense funding will end up going into the bio-equivalent of pen testing and red teams ...? At some point some loon in power will chant “The best biodefense is a good biooffense” ...

⬐ buboard

it will inevitably come to this. but we also live in a world of deterrence through mutual destruction, not defense

⬐ mindfulplay

It's interesting to look back at these sort of prescient events and laud the people who got it right and ignore all the people that 'got it wrong'.

However in Bill Gates' case, he really was being realistic and not prescient given his close work with global healthcare. He must have seen up close how fragile this whole setup was.

⬐ buboard

his wife is also talking about family planning in Africa, a difficult but earth-changing subject that politicians won't touch

⬐ yyy888sss

And luckily they don't need to as lower birth rates means wrld population will likely peak at 10bn. African birth rates have dropped faster than predictions.

⬐ buboard

not fast enough for africa to avoid economic disaster

⬐ throwaway5752

Let's discard present circumstances, then, and notice that he just resigned from his board seats with Microsoft and Berkshire to focus all of his energy on climate change. He is treating that far more seriously than he treated pandemic preparedness.

Also, we should forever be thankful that such a mild version of the coronavirus mutated a structural upgrade like the furin cleavage site. If this had happened with SARS, MERS, or a hemorrhagic fever it could have been real trouble.

⬐ nikofeyn

> Also, we should forever be thankful that such a mild version of the coronavirus mutated a structural upgrade like the furin cleavage site. If this had happened with SARS, MERS, or a hemorrhagic fever it could have been real trouble.

would you mind elaborating, because i don't understand or follow this.

what is the relevance of mutating a "structural upgrade like the furin cleavage site"? forgive my lack of biology, but i both don't understand what this means nor its relevance.

in "if this had happened with...", what is "this"? if it is the current coronavirus outbreak, isn't the current one much worse because it is more mild than sars?

⬐ petilon

> to focus all of his energy on climate change.

Not true. Press release says "global health, development, education, and his increasing engagement in tackling climate change".

He warned us. We didn't listen.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Af6b_wyiwI

⬐ jotm

And if this fizzles out people will just go "see? there was no need for these drastic measures, nothing happened!"...

Nothing happened because drastic measures were taken...

⬐ Mountain_Skies

Another scenario is drastic measures are taken but the threat fizzles out on its own. With infectious diseases it can be quite difficult to know until it is over just how real the threat was. President Ford pushed for a widespread inoculation program for a swine flu epidemic that seemed threatening but never came. The vaccine caused more health problems than the flu itself. Ford was heavily criticized and lost credibility for his level of response but there was no way for him to know it would fizzle out on its own. Had he not acted and it became an epidemic, he also would have faced political consequences. Sometimes the best response simply can't be known ahead of time.

⬐ fit2rule

People did listen. But the general population - and most of their politicians - are too complacent, decadent even, to change lifestyles.

The West is addicted to lifestyles. Its near impossible for many people to consider changing their lives in any way - why should they? Nobody else does.

If anything, I hope that after this event is over, the survivors take a long hard look at who and what they are, in relation to each other. I hope we get over our decadence and realise that our 'safe' cultures are anything but safe, and that we all address the need to build better societies.

⬐ thu2111

Fine words that mean nothing. What sort of "decadent lifestyle" do you have in mind, given that pandemics have existed for as long as humanity, everywhere in every society.

⬐ fit2rule

Well, its pretty decadent to not have your own garden.

⬐ randomsearch

I think about a gazillion people identified exactly this type of situation as a problem, and we’ve had plenty of other outbreaks. It is completely unsurprising. The UK has done a lot of modelling and prepping for such an event, as I’m sure have other governments, but that doesn’t give you magic powers when it happens.

⬐ makomk

It's also worth bearing in mind that there's precisely one country which could possibly have done what he suggested and stopped this by preventing the spillover in the first place - China - and, well, good luck with that.

⬐ randomsearch

I think the problem is that the virus is so mild. You can't spot a lot of cases, so e.g. someone gets on a plane and is not showing symptoms and a few days later in Italy they get sick or infect others without realising they're ill.