Entire country needs to shutdown for 6 to 10 weeks to bounce back: Bill Gates on Covid-19

New Delhi, Mar 27: As the coronavirus pandemic worsened globally, Microsoft co-founder and longtime philanthropist Bill Gates in an recent interview with TED talks shared his view on coronavirus or Coivd 19.

He believes that "there is no middle ground" in the fight against the novel coronavirus, and called for an 'extreme shutdown' for at least six to 10 weeks, across the United States to stop the spread of COVID-19 and minimize the long-term economic impact.

He also shared why he predicted a few years ago that a global pandemic would hit the world.

In this 2015 TED talks interview, philanthropist billionaire Bill Gates explains that the real danger in coronavirus is that it is infectious before symptoms have started. He calls these types of viruses worst-case scenarios.

Bill Gates had warned,"If anything kills over 10 million people in the next few decades, it's most likely to be a highly infectious virus rather than a war. Not missiles, but microbes".

The philanthropist also notes that while Coronavirus is more infectious than MERS or SARS, it isn't as deadly.

"Ebola, you're actually flat on your back before you're very infectious so you're not at church or on a bus or at a store. With most respiratory viruses like the flu at first, you only feel a little bit of a fever and a little bit sick. So there's the possibility you're going about your normal activities and infecting other people. Human to human transmissible respiratory viruses that in the early stage aren't stopping you from doing things, that's kind of a worst-case," Microsoft co-founder said during the TED Talks five years ago.

He goes on to say that people move around more now, making for more worldwide victims. Gates also says that he understood the virus would be very difficult to contain back in January when he heard that it was human to human transmissible.

The interview is a must-see not only for Bill Gates fans but for everyone who is concerned about Coronavirus because here we are, and he was right: