Nobody paid attention five years ago when Bill Gates made this speech. In fact, President Trump actually took steps backward by doing away with the Pandemic Response Team that President Obama had put together.
However, Mr Gates was prescient.
We’re going to get through this pandemic. And then we have to face a considerable economic mop-up. We’ll get through that too, although — if Trump is president — I expect the debate to be acrimonious and crazy-making.
But it would better — far better — if we took the lessons in our economic situation and the need to prepare for epidemics and pandemics very seriously.
Here is a look back five years when a concerned citizen took the time to try to warn us. Our lives would be so much better if we had listened.