Bill Gates Predicts Lower Death Rate from Coronavirus than President Trump

Microsoft’s co-founder Bill Gates has said that the coronavirus pandemic is a “nightmare scenario” but he has predicted a lower death rate than the president.

According to the president, the U.S. could see less than 100,000 to 240,000 deaths from COVID-19 before the outbreak is under control. This prediction echoed what White House health advisor Anthony Fauci had said.

Gates, who resigned from Microsoft’s board in March, believes that if people continue to practice social distancing and remain in quarantine, the cases could level off toward the end of this month.

“If we do the social distancing properly, we should be able to get out of this with a death number well short of that,” Gates told Chris Wallace on Fox News this past Sunday. Gates remarked that it’s “very important” those figures are out there so people understand the severity of the situation.

As of Sunday. the U.S. had 312,245 confirmed cases and over 8,500 deaths. The world has over 1.2 million cases and at least 65,711 deaths.

“This is a nightmare scenario because human-to-human transmittal respiratory viruses can grow exponentially,” he said.

“And you know, if we had kept on going to work, traveling like we were, you know, that curve would never bend until you had the majority of the people infected and then a massive number seeking hospital care and lots of lots of deaths.”

Gates predicted things won’t “go back to truly normal until we have a vaccine that we’ve gotten out to basically the entire world.”