Bill Gates froze the hall at a conference in Munich on Saturday. This weekend, the German city hosts the 53rd Security Conference that brings together elite political, diplomatic and military worldwide. Over 500 experts have met to analyze mainly transatlantic relations and the new US administration's intentions.
Until recently, the bio-terrorist threats have been less considered, because the production of "deadly weapons" requires experts and huge laboratories, easily traced. In the past five years, the advances in cell biology and miniaturization of equipment are an increasingly plausible script of a bioterrorist attack that would destabilize whole areas.
Million people will die
Microsoft co-founder said at the Munich Security Conference that we are threatened by an apocalyptic pandemic, similar to the flu epidemic of 1918, when about 50 million people died. Such a crisis could erupt in the next 10-15 years, the billionaire warned.
He also talked about the threat of bioterrorism, saying that it is likely that a genetically engineer would use computers to create a pathogen synthetic airborne and could affect an important part of the population very quickly, the journalists of the Huffington Post wrote.
"The next epidemic could break out on a screen of a computer"
"The next epidemic could break out on a screen of a computer, being made by a terrorist in order to create a synthetic version of the chickenpox virus or a contagious and deadly strain extra flu," said the billionaire.
"Whether that will happen naturally or artificially epidemiologists say a quick airborne pathogen could kill more than 30 million people in less than a year."
Bill Gates fights to improve the global health for more than 20 years. Along with a pandemic, Gates is worried about a nuclear war and the climate change. However he believes that if we start to prepare now for the possibility of an epidemic we could be safe.
‘It’s hard to get your mind around a catastrophe of that scale, but it happened not that long ago. In 1918, a particularly virulent and deadly strain of flu killed between 50 million and 100 million people,’ he said.
He also pointed out that we should take into account the effects it might have on the economy if it will spread in urban areas.
