Bill Gates writes in a NEJM perspective on May 31, 2018, “Thanks to better vaccines” we’ve made headway on diseases.

“Yet there is one area where the world isn’t making much progress: pandemic preparedness. This failure should concern us all, because history has taught us there will be another deadly global pandemic. We can’t predict when, but given the continual emergence of new pathogens, the increasing risk of a bioterror attack, and the ever-increasing connectedness of our world [population growth] , there is a significant probability that a large and lethal modern-day pandemic will occur in our lifetime.”

“What the world needs is a coordinated global approach to pandemics that will work regardless of whether the next pandemic is a product of humans or of nature.”

The percentage of people who choose to get a seasonal influenza vaccine is fairly small, but modelling simulations suggest a “highly contagious and lethal airborne pathogen” could see “33 million people worldwide would die in just 6 months”.

[2 1/2 years into the COVID-19 pandemic 6.3 million deaths have been recorded worldwide]

On May 29, 2018 the Gates foundation “launched a $12 million Grand Challenge … to accelerate the development of a universal influenza vaccine” in order to end the “pandemic threat”.  He noted “the current influenza vaccines significantly underperform.”

“However, the next threat may not be influenza at all.”

Late 2018 CEPI will award grants “to several companies, working with a variety of technologies, including nucleic acid vaccines, viral vectors, and other innovative approaches. The goal is the capability to develop, test, and release new vaccines in a matter of months rather than years.”

“If we can learn how to use RNA or gene delivery effectively, we may not need to make the antibodies at all. Instead, new methods of gene delivery could enable our own cells to produce these antibodies directly.”

“In the case of biologic threats, that sense of urgency is lacking.”  The “world needs to prepare for pandemics in the same serious way it prepares for war.”