Microsoft founder and philanthropist Bill Gates has said that countries could have avoided economically disastrous lockdowns if they had not wasted the month of February and instead implemented effective coronavirus testing.
Gates, whose Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation focusses on improving global healthcare, said “testing is everything” in the context of Covid-19 and that many countries did not act fast enough in order to avoid lockdowns.
Many countries had not “taken advantage of the month of February”, Gates said, adding that South Korea’s approach to mass testing was a lesson “everyone should learn from”. He continued: “South Korea took advantage of February, built up the testing capacity and they were able to contact trace and the infections have gone down even without the type of shutdown that, because we’re late, we’re having to do.”
“Testing is everything,” Gates argued. “That’s how you know whether you need to do more shutdown or you’re starting to get to the point where you can relieve it – you’re blind when you randomly decide who gets access to the testing capacity, testing at high volume and isolation must go together.”
Gates said that the US had missed the opportunity to control the spread of the virus without a shutdown and mocked suggestions that people could be encouraged to continue going about their business as usual. “We need to shutdown to avoid the worst case of what was happening in Wuhan [in China] and northern Italy,” Gates remarked. “There is no middle ground, it’s tough to say to people ‘keep going to restaurants, go buy new houses, ignore that pile of bodies over in the corner – we want you to keep spending because there’s maybe a politician who thinks GDP growth is what really counts.’”
Gates said it was irresponsible for “someone to suggest we can have the best of both worlds”. He added: “What we need is the extreme shutdown so that in six to ten weeks, if things go well, then you can start opening back up”.
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