Bill Gates is really pulling for the human race to make it another 10 years without an epidemic. Because if an epidemic should arise, humans are a bit strapped for resources and cooperation to combat it, and its effects could be deadly—just look at the clunky responses to Zika virus and the Ebola outbreak, the two most recent health crises. Gates does, however, remain optimistic. "I do think we'll have much better medical tools, much better response, but we are a bit vulnerable right now if something that spread very quickly, like say a flu that was quite fatal," he told BBC Radio 4 Friday. "That would be a tragedy."
Gates has funded research into an algorithm predicting how quickly an epidemic would spread across the world. "Within 60 days it's basically in all urban centers around the entire globe," Gates told Vox last year. "That didn't happen with the Spanish flu." Spanish influenza killed as many as 50 million people in a year. Gates' algorithm predicted that a similarly deadly epidemic today would kill more than 33 million people in only 250 days, especially considering how mobile people have become.
"I cross my fingers all the time that some epidemic like a big flu doesn't come along in the next 10 years," Gates told the BBC. Getting a flu shot probably wouldn't hurt either.
