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Post by Admin on Mar 10, 2020 10:45:21 GMT
Bill Gates Could Supply Your Next Coronavirus Test Kit
The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation will soon begin distributing at-home testing kits for Seattle-area residents who suspect they have contracted Covid-19, according to a new report in the Seattle Times. Test kits could become available as soon as this week, via a lab funded by the foundation, could start testing hundreds per day with scaling availabilities in the weeks ahead. "Although there's a lot to be worked out, this has enormous potential to turn the tide of the epidemic," Scott Dowell, who is in charge of the Covid-19 response effort by the foundation, told the Times. News of the test kits comes as confirmed cases in the US surge above 500 across 34 states. Washington state, specifically the Seattle Metropolitan Area, has been the hardest hit region in the country, with 16 deaths and 128 confirmed cases. The Gates Foundation has spent more than $20 million in the virus response effort and has committed at least $5 million for the Seattle area. Trevor Bedford, a computational biologist at Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center, warned last week that actual cases in Seattle could be around 600. Bedford said cases could soar to 12,000 to 30,000 by the end of the month if virus containment measures weren't in place to slow down the transmission rate. While the foundation's urgency for developing a new test kit is timely, Gates was apart of The Event 201 scenario in October (months before Covid-19) that modeled a breakout of coronavirus across the world, killing 65 million people by month 18.
[Emphasis mine.]
With the Covid-19 breakout only just getting started on the continental US, expect this map to be much redder in the coming weeks. One can only hope the foundation can ramp up test kits, considering there's a massive shortage at hospitals. |
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Post by Admin on Mar 10, 2020 12:20:03 GMT
As noted in the above article, Event 201 was a theoretical exercise back in October of 2019 that particularly examined a coronavirus pandemic:
Pandemic simulation exercise spotlights massive preparedness gap
Event 201, hosted by the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security, envisions a fast-spreading coronavirus with a devastating impact
HUB / Published Nov 6, 2019
Back in 2001, it was a smallpox outbreak, set off by terrorists in U.S. shopping malls. This fall, it was a SARS-like virus, germinating quietly among pig farms in Brazil before spreading to every country in the world.
With each fictional pandemic Johns Hopkins experts have designed, the takeaway lesson is the same: We are nowhere near prepared.
"Once you're in the midst of a severe pandemic, your options are very limited," says Eric Toner, a senior scholar at the Center for Health Security at Johns Hopkins University. "The greatest good can happen with pre-planning."
That center's latest pandemic simulation, Event 201, dropped participants right in the midst of an uncontrolled coronavirus outbreak that was spreading like wildfire out of South America to wreak worldwide havoc. As fictional newscasters from "GNN" narrated, the immune-resistant virus (nicknamed CAPS) was crippling trade and travel, sending the global economy into freefall. Social media was rampant with rumors and misinformation, governments were collapsing, and citizens were revolting. For those participating in New York City on Oct. 18—a heavyweight group of policymakers, business leaders, and health officials—Event 201 was a chance to see how much catch-up work is needed to bolster our disaster response systems. Full videos of the discussion are available online. "It really does shake up assumptions and change thinking about how we can prepare for a global pandemic," says Tom Inglesby, director of the Center for Health Security.
Event 201 is the fourth such exercise hosted by the Johns Hopkins center, which works to prepare communities for biological threats, pandemics, and other disasters. The simulations started with 2001's Dark Winter, which gathered national security experts for its simulated smallpox outbreak. The groundbreaking event turned out to be influential in shaping U.S. efforts around pandemic preparedness—particularly due to its timing, right before 9/11. "Dark Winter resulted in more than a dozen congressional hearings, was briefed to the White House, and ultimately influenced the decision to stockpile enough smallpox vaccine for all Americans," Inglesby says. That simulation and its two successors— Atlantic Storm, conducted in 2005, and last summer's Clade X—have also demonstrated lasting value as educational and advocacy tools, with reenactments or modified versions taking place in settings including universities, the CDC, and Capitol Hill, according to Inglesby. "These exercises have a long fuse," he says. For Event 201, hosted in collaboration with the World Economic Forum and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the experts added a new layer of realism by reaching beyond government and NGOs to leaders in the private sector and business community. Participants included representatives from NBCUniversal, UPS, and Johnson & Johnson. "Very few people have included the private sector in pandemic preparedness, but that's where most of the resources are," Toner says. That's particularly true when it comes to vaccine development. The CAPS virus—which Toner describes as a cousin of SARS, "but slightly more transmissible, like the flu, and slightly more lethal"—was presented as resistant to any existing vaccine, as scientists scrambled to come up with one. Citizens, meanwhile, were rioting over scarce access to the next best thing: a fictional antiviral known to treat some CAPS symptoms. That scenario, Toner says, is utterly realistic. "We don't have a vaccine for SARS, or MERS, or various avian flu viruses that have come up in the past decade," he notes. "That's because vaccine development is slow and difficult if there isn't an immediate market for it." In the simulation, CAPS resulted in a death toll of 65 million people within 18 months—surpassing the deadliest pandemic in history, the 1918 Spanish flu. From the discussions Event 201 inspired, the Center for Health Security plans to release a set of formal recommendations within the coming weeks. Shortly after the simulation, the center released the Global Health Security Index, the first-ever comprehensive ranking of countries on their pandemic preparedness. All in all, the picture was discouraging: The average score, across 195 countries, was 40 out of a possible 100. "It's our hope," Inglesby says, "that countries will use this to consider where they are strong and where they are weak." |
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Post by Admin on Mar 10, 2020 12:24:49 GMT
[A theoretical simulation of a coronavirus outbreak in October 2019,
approximately three months before the first reported Wuhan coronavirus case in December 2019 - The Catacombs]
Event 201 simulates an outbreak of a novel zoonotic coronavirus transmitted from bats to pigs to people that eventually becomes efficiently transmissible from person to person, leading to a severe pandemic. The pathogen and the disease it causes are modeled largely on SARS, but it is more transmissible in the community setting by people with mild symptoms. The disease starts in pig farms in Brazil, quietly and slowly at first, but then it starts to spread more rapidly in healthcare settings. When it starts to spread efficiently from person to person in the low-income, densely packed neighborhoods of some of the megacities in South America, the epidemic explodes. It is first exported by air travel to Portugal, the United States, and China and then to many other countries. Although at first some countries are able to control it, it continues to spread and be reintroduced, and eventually no country can maintain control.
There is no possibility of a vaccine being available in the first year. There is a fictional antiviral drug that can help the sick but not significantly limit spread of the disease. Since the whole human population is susceptible, during the initial months of the pandemic, the cumulative number of cases increases exponentially, doubling every week. And as the cases and deaths accumulate, the economic and societal consequences become increasingly severe.The scenario ends at the 18-month point, with 65 million deaths. The pandemic is beginning to slow due to the decreasing number of susceptible people. The pandemic will continue at some rate until there is an effective vaccine or until 80-90 % of the global population has been exposed. From that point on, it is likely to be an endemic childhood disease.
[Emphasis mine.]
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Post by Admin on Mar 19, 2020 13:53:28 GMT
Bill Gates predicted coronavirus-type pandemic could ‘kill millions’ in 2019 Netflix documentary
Bill Gates predicted a coronavirus-type outbreak in a Netflix doc (Picture: Netflix/Reuters)
Bill Gates predicted a coronavirus-style pandemic would sweep the population in a Netflix documentary.
The Microsoft tycoon talked about a virus breaking out, in one episode of the Explained series aired late last year.
He warned of the likelihood of a virus forming in one of China’s wet markets – just like the one in Wuhan where coronavirus is believed to have originated. Bill said we’re not prepared to contain a pandemic and warned it could ‘kill millions of people’.
In the episode, titled The Next Pandemic, producers visit a wet market in Lianghua, China, where animals are killed and their meat is sold in the same place. ‘All the while, their viruses are mixing and mutating, increasing the odds that one finds its way to humans,’ the documentary explains. Bill Gates
Bill said the world is ill-equipped to deal with a viral disease when scientists are often years away from discovering a cure. ‘If you think of anything that could come along that would kill millions of people, a pandemic is our greatest risk,’ he said.
He said we need to better prepare for pandemics otherwise the world will look back and wish it had invested more into vaccine research.
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