Bill Gates warns of possible 'more fatal' COVID variant, calls for pandemic task force helmed by WHO that will cost $1 billion a year



Bill Gates – the software developer – gave an interview to the Financial Times where he rang the alarm about the possibility of a "more fatal" variant of COVID-19. In an interview with the British economic publication, the Microsoft billionaire petitioned for a pandemic response task force that would cost $1 billion.

Despite there being more than 6.2 million COVID-19 deaths, Gates warned that the pandemic could get even deadlier.

"We’re still at risk of this pandemic generating a variant that would be even more transmissive and even more fatal," Gates told the Financial Times.

"It’s not likely, I don’t want to be a voice of doom and gloom," Gates added. "But it's way above a 5% risk that this pandemic, we haven’t even seen the worst of it."

In a CNBC interview in February, Gates discussed the Omicron variant.

"Sadly, the virus itself, particularly the variant called Omicron, is a type of vaccine," Gates stated. "That is it creates both B cell and T cell immunity. And it has done a better job of getting out to the world population than we have with vaccines."

Gates also warned, "We'll have another pandemic. It will be a different pathogen next time."

Gates has been cautioning about pandemics for years.

In a 2015 TED Talk, Gates declared that the world was "not ready for the next epidemic," and viruses posed the "greatest risk of global catastrophe" compared to other threats to civilization.

The Wall Street Journal reported that Gates warned then-President Donald Trump in December 2016 about the potential danger of a pandemic.

In a 2018 discussion about epidemics hosted by the Massachusetts Medical Society and the New England Journal of Medicine, Gates warned that a pandemic could happen within the next decade. The businessman claimed that a flu-like disease could kill 30 million people in six months.

Gates has a new book coming out this week, where the software developer outlines the need for a firefighter-like pandemic task force named "global epidemic response and mobilization." He believes the GERM would be a part of the World Health Organization and could stop outbreaks of disease from spreading.

My back-of-the-napkin estimate is that GERM would need about 3,000 full-time employees. Their skills should run the gamut: epidemiology, genetics, drug and vaccine development, data systems, diplomacy, rapid response, logistics, computer modeling, and communications. GERM should be managed by the World Health Organization, the only group that can give it global credibility, and it should have a diverse workforce, with a decentralized staff working in many places in the world.

Gates estimates that the pandemic task force headed by the WHO would cost "over $1 billion a year."

WATCH: Gov. DeSantis SHREDS Biden's new COVID-19 plan with FACTS



On "The Rubin Report," BlazeTV host Dave Rubin of shared a clip of Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) blasting President Joe Biden 's reaction to the Omicron variant of COVID-19. The Biden administration announced Thursday a series of new "actions" to combat the new variant, but DeSantis pointed out that current infection rates in states with the most draconian restrictions are, in many cases, significantly higher than states without.

"[Biden] basically sold the public a bill of goods said that he would shut [COVID-19] down. He's not shutting it down. So what they're doing now, I think is just not going to have any impact on mitigating COVID. It's more theater," DeSantis said while speaking at the Pensacola National Guard Armory.

"Florida, we have the the lowest COVID rate in the country ... if you look in the Covidestem Project, which is Yale, Harvard, Stanford," he continued. "But a lot of those places that have the high [rate of] infections, they have mandates, and they have passports, and they have all these things. So, I just think we need to get real here, and we should not be imposing any type of mandates or restrictions on the American people, especially when you don't do that for people that are coming into this country illegally."

Watch the video below or find more episodes of "The Rubin Report" here:

Disclaimer: The content of this clip does not provide medical advice. Please seek the advice of local health officials for any COVID-19 and/or COVID vaccine related questions & concerns.


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New COVID variant considered 'worse than' Delta is 'spreading rapidly' in South Africa and worrying health experts across the globe



A new COVID-19 variant recently identified in South Africa is causing concern from public health experts across the globe due to its high number of mutations and increased transmissibility among young people. Some are even warning the new strain could prove to be more dangerous than the Delta variant.

What are the details?

It's unclear where exactly the new strain, formerly known as B.1.1.529, initially arose but it was first detected in South Africa and has since been detected among South African travelers in neighboring Botswana as well as Hong Kong, the Associated Press reported. On Friday, Israel also said it had detected cases.

South Africa's minister of health, Joe Phaahla, announced this week that the variant has been linked to a rapid increase in the number of cases in the country's Gauteng province over the last few days.

"Over the last four or five days, there has been more of an exponential rise," Phaahla said, according to Time. The magazine noted that South African scientists are presently working to determine the percentage of new cases that were caused by the new variant, but they suspect it to be high.

Over the past several weeks, COVID-19 transmission in the country had settled to a relatively low rate at just over 200 new confirmed cases per day. But in the past week, the daily new cases suddenly shot up to more than 1,200. And then on Thursday, the number of new cases skyrocketed to 2,465.

One of the most worrying elements about the new variant is its "constellation" of more than 30 new mutations, said Tulio de Oliveira of the Network for Genomic Surveillance in South Africa.

"We can see that the variant is potentially spreading very fast," de Oliveira added. "We do expect to start seeing pressure in the healthcare system in the next few days and weeks."

"[The] very high number of mutations is a concern for predicted immune evasion and transmissibility," he explained.

What has been the international reaction?

News of the new variant has caught the attention of scientists and public health officials around the world.

The British government on Thursday announced that it would be banning flights from South Africa and five other southern African countries effective Friday. Other European countries, such as the Netherlands, have followed suit.

Video surfaced on social media Friday appearing to show travelers from South Africa being instructed not to exit their plane after landing in Amsterdam.

NOW - Passengers from South Africa are currently not allowed to exit the plane in Amsterdam amid fears over the new variant.pic.twitter.com/XiTX7I5uBK
— Disclose.tv (@Disclose.tv) 1637929051

The U.K.'s health secretary, Sajid Javid, told reporters there were concerns that the new variant "may be more transmissible" than the Delta strain and that current vaccines "may be less effective" against it, according to Time.

On Friday, Israel was reportedly on "the threshold of an emergency situation" over the new variant.

One scientist, Tom Peacock, a virologist at the Imperial College in the U.K., reportedly described the variant's combination of mutations as "horrific" and warned it had the potential to be "worse than nearly anything else," including the dominant Delta strain.

According to the AP, another U.K. scientist, Lawrence Young, a virologist at the University of Warwick, described the variant as "spreading rapidly" and as "the most heavily mutated version of the virus we have seen."