Will there be another pandemic in your lifetime?

Bill Gates said Friday that the risks of severe disease from Covid-19 have “dramatically reduced” but another pandemic is all but certain.

Speaking to CNBC’s Hadley Gamble at Germany’s annual Munich Security Conference, Gates, co-chair of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, said that a potential new pandemic would likely stem from a different pathogen to that of the coronavirus family.

But he added that advances in medical technology should help the world do a better job of fighting it — if investments are made now.

“We’ll have another pandemic. It will be a different pathogen next time,” Gates said.

The chance of severe disease, which is mainly associated with being elderly and having obesity or diabetes, those risks are now dramatically reduced because of that infection exposure,” he said.

Gates said it was already “too late” to reach the World Health Organization’s goal to vaccinate 70% of the global population by mid-2022. Currently 61.9% of the world population has received at least one dose of a Covid-19 vaccine.

https://www.cnbc.com/2022/02/18/bill-gates-covid-risks-have-reduced-but-another-pandemic-will-come.html