Bill Gates on a coronavirus vaccine: The major issue is time – Yahoo Finance

Microsoft (MSFT) founder and billionaire Bill Gates wants life to get back like it was before the global coronavirus outbreak.

The only way to truly do that is with a vaccine and that will take time.

"People like myself and [Dr. Anthony] Fauci are saying eighteen months, Gates told BBC Breakfast. If everything went perfectly, we could do slightly better than that. But there will be a trade-off: Well have less safety testing than we typically would have... we just don't have the time to do what we normally do.

The urgency to develop a COVID-19 vaccine is necessary, Gates stressed.

If you want to wait and see if a side effect shows up two years later, that takes two years, he said. So when youre acting quickly... this is a public good, so those trade-offs will be necessary.

Bill Gates, Co-Chair, Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation speaks onstage at 2019 New York Times Dealbook on November 06, 2019 in New York City. (Photo: Mike Cohen/Getty Images for The New York Times)

The Gates Foundation, through the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations (CEPI) a global public-privatepartnershiplaunched in 2017 that the Gates Foundation funds has thus farmade investmentsin eight vaccine programs.

We're doing everything we can, Gates said. We'll write checks for those factories faster than governments can and they'll come along. It definitely shouldn't be money limited. It should should be all the best constructs, full-speed ahead, science limited.

The prominent philanthropist has advocated for widespread testing and previously a nation-wide shutdown to slow the spread of coronavirus in the short term.

Confirmed coronavirus cases are still on the rise.(David Foster/Yahoo Finance)

The ultimate solution, the only thing that really lets us go back completely to normal and feel good about sitting in a stadium with lots of other people, is to create a vaccine, Gates said last week.And not just take care of country, but take that vaccine out to the global population so that we have vast immunity and this thing, no matter what, isnt going to spread in large numbers.

The timing and eventual emergence of a coronavirus vaccine is being closely watched and considered as an early indicator of the end of the outbreak.

Were looking around the world. As they relax the economic controls, the virus flares back up again, Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis President Neel Kashkari said on CBSs Face the Nation. We could have these waves of flareups, controls, flareups and controls until we actually get a therapy or a vaccine. I think we should all be focusing on an 18-month strategy for our health care system and our economy.

Confirmed coronavirus cases are still on the rise.(David Foster/Yahoo Finance)

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Melinda Gates shed some light on the processes involved in that 18-month vaccine timeline.

From everything we know from working with our partners for many, many years on vaccines, you have to test the compounds ... go into preclinical trials, then full-scale trials, Melinda Gates explained in a separate interview with Business Insider. And even though I'm sure the FDA will fast-track some of these vaccine trials like they did with Ebola, still by the time you get it through the trials safety- and efficacy-wise, then you have to manufacture the vaccine and manufacture at scale.

U.S. President Donald Trump has called the coronavirus a horrible, invisible enemy and declared that the country is at war and were fighting an invisible enemy.

But Gates noted that the severe lack of preparation for such a war despite the vast implications was a serious mistake by governments around the world.

Unlike the defense budget that prepares us for wars where we simulate the problem when we make sure we're good at it, this risk which I viewed as even greater than the risk of war there was very, very little preparation, very few of these germ games, said Gates, who famously warned about a pandemic in 2015.

Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, listens as U.S. President Donald Trump addresses the daily coronavirus response briefing at the White House in Washington, U.S., April 1, 2020. REUTERS/Tom Brenner

In a germ game, researchers would say: Okay how do you build up the ICU capacity? Can you make ventilators? How do you prioritize the diagnostics? Gates explained. That we're just figuring out.

In any case, once a vaccine becomes available and various public health responses are carried out, the world will better prepare for the next pandemic.

People just didnt organize their governments to have that function, Gates said. I do think now, because this has been so dramatic, ... we will be ready for the next pandemic. And using the new tools of science, that's very, very doable.

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Bill Gates on a coronavirus vaccine: The major issue is time - Yahoo Finance