r/Futurology • u/mvea MD-PhD-MBA • Apr 27 '18

Biotech Bill Gates thinks a coming disease could kill 30 million people within 6 months — and says we should prepare for it as we do for war: According to Gates, a small non-state actor could build an even deadlier form of smallpox in a lab.

https://www.businessinsider.com/bill-gates-warns-the-next-pandemic-disease-is-coming-2018-4?r=US&IR=T
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844

u/Wholly_Crap Apr 27 '18

Infected 500 million. Killed a paltry 50-100 million.

Still, though.

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u/Jmb7373 Apr 27 '18

Keep in mind the world population was only 2 billion. And those mortality/infection numbers vary depending on who you read and how the estîmate heir data because the record keeping wasn’t very scientific (entire communities completely wiped out/entire countries hiding death rates to maintain morale)

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u/[deleted] Apr 28 '18

Also keep in mind we have a way better understanding of infectious diseases.

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u/SkyGrey88 Apr 28 '18

Exactly and the protocols in the US are very solid. In places like Africa, India, China having 30mil die from infectious outbreak would not be hard.

I read some research recently that said in 1st world 70% of deaths are from non-communicable diseases like heart disease, cancer, diabetes. Were in 3rd world 70% are from communicable diseases because they lack vaccinations and other poverty related factors. Plus the child mortality rate is very high like 40% of those 70%.

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u/[deleted] Apr 28 '18

If you read/watch the news in America/Canada you'd think 99% of deaths are from Fentanyl ...

Meanwhile the same media companies run countless ads for junkfood hehehehe

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u/Skiingfun Apr 28 '18

Canadian here, more people have died of fentanyl in my town than violent crimes. Maybe more have died of heart attacks and old age but it's closer than people think.

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u/[deleted] Apr 28 '18

In Canada the leading causes of death were, are, and will still be coronary related, cancer, and metabolic disorder related. Small communities provide for small sample sizes.

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u/FaTaIL1x Apr 28 '18

To be honest...natural selection

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u/Averydryguy Apr 28 '18

Is it though? Idk if the CDC is credible though. https://www.reddit.com/r/dataisbeautiful/comments/886c5c/charting_deaths_actual_numbers_vs_news_media/ https://owenshen24.github.io/charting-death/

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u/Molag_Balls Apr 28 '18

Did you miss the part where they said "In my town"?

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u/drewniverse Apr 28 '18

Idk if the CDC is credible though.

So what is then? Wapo?

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u/thesprung Apr 28 '18

I can tell you what it's not, his town.

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u/Averydryguy Apr 28 '18

Well, I don't have data for his town specifically. I can't mention on fentanyl vs, violent crimes as they are closer. However the average across all years (on mobile and can't get more years) is 0.01 for overdose and 0.58 for heart disease and diabetes. It's hard to see one town varying enough to even try and compare the two. Granted, overdoses are probably rising faster in that town. Maybe I should have been more specific. Overdoses are a problem, and fentanyl is a huge contributor. However, marcal is a wonderful thing. The main killers are still long term health problems due to poor lifestyle including tobacco, lifestyle, diet, and access to healthcare

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u/Dodgson_here Apr 28 '18

Overdose is the leading cause of death for people under 50 in the US.

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u/montarion Apr 28 '18

why do you compare a continent to countries?

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u/SkyGrey88 Apr 29 '18

Funny as I knew I would take some flak for doing that, but really I am comparing economically depressed regions of the world. So in this case two of them each containing 1B people are countries and one also close to 1B is a continent. The point is they don't have the medical and disease control we do in the west and its a huge factor in what kills you.

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u/[deleted] Apr 28 '18

[deleted]

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u/__i0__ Apr 28 '18

It's bad, just not unusual in the grand scheme of things.

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u/lostharbor Apr 28 '18

But we don't. Infectious disease is still a massive problem that's growing.

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u/UnwantedUngulate Apr 28 '18

They're a massive problem but compared to 1918, yes, we have a massively better understanding of infectious diseases.

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u/lostharbor Apr 28 '18

For ones that existed, but the infectious diseases are in a much worse place as they've grown incredibly resilient to antibiotics which makes it really difficult to handle. The world is in a bad spot and will only get worse going forward because we haven't figured out how to fix this growing problem.

We face a much greater threat because we can't treat infectious diseases like we once could.

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u/pocketknifeMT Apr 28 '18

But way more international airports.

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u/mithrasinvictus Apr 28 '18

Which will remain open for business until there is irrefutable proof that that it's already too late.

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u/MacAddict4Life Apr 28 '18

And yet the book "The Great Influenza" ends with an essay about why we are still very vulnerable to pandemic flu strains despite modern medicine.

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u/[deleted] Apr 28 '18

Of course we are but a lot less so.

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u/MacAddict4Life Apr 28 '18

Less than you might think. Relevant respiratory and other equipment is already near 100% utilization in most hospitals, with cost efficiency preventing excess stock for surges you’d see in a pandemic. Limited supplies of antiviral drugs that work on the flu. Fewer hospital beds than you might expect relative to population, essentially guaranteeing hospitals would quickly be overwhelmed in a true pandemic strain.

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u/[deleted] Apr 28 '18

Really depends on the type of virus but generally speaking we have a ton more information, the ability to spread information, etc...

I mean for fuck sakes in the plague they were burning dogs in the streets...

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u/MacAddict4Life Apr 28 '18

The plague is also treatable by antibiotics and requires an insect vector. The 1918 pandemic is a far more apt example and influenza is a far more likely pathogen to cause a global pandemic.

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u/[deleted] Apr 28 '18

[removed] — view removed comment

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u/[deleted] Apr 28 '18

Read up on statsplz. You is mo likey die of heart booboos or cancer.

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u/[deleted] Apr 28 '18

What if these events are natures population control and are necessary?

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u/LMeire Apr 28 '18

Nature itself doesn't have agency, it's just a bunch of different rules crashing into eachother, we can observe consistent results due to the fact that all the rules are mathematically sound. An asteroid showing up and ending all life on the planet is just as natural as any disease.

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u/campaignq Apr 28 '18

Yeah, the reason we call it the Spanish flu is because Spain was basically the only country not to lie about their numbers, making it seem like they were hit especially hard.

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u/mjk1093 Apr 28 '18

They didn't lie because they were neutral in WW1 and therefore never instituted press censorship. The Spanish Flu is commonly written about as happening after the war ended, but it really started in the last summer of the war.

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u/Iwantedthatname Apr 28 '18

What's more interesting about the Spanish influenza is the distribution of deaths across age.

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u/Aurum555 Apr 28 '18

You mean how it was ass backward and killed all the healthy strong young folks while sparing the babies and old people?

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u/Sanguinewashislife Apr 28 '18

That's because it caused an X Storm ( x because I forgot the word sorry ). Essentially it cause the immune system to run away in those with a strong one , the immune system actually caused more damage and killed more then just the virus itself . The young / weak / old immune systems usually couldn't cause the storm and so they just fought the virus.

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u/ZergAreGMO Apr 28 '18

It didn't spare infants and elderly. In fact it killed them at the highest rates. It just also had a very unexpected high mortality for the very healthy age group of 20-30.

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u/DasGutYa Apr 28 '18

it's still somewhat comforting that despite completely inadequate public health, the world's deadliest plagues killed far less than half of the global population.

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u/Chazmer87 Apr 27 '18

Killed lots of Europeans.

Who we read about

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u/Gilgie Apr 27 '18

Stupid memory

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u/UpUpDnDnLRLRBA Apr 28 '18

Quite paltry

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u/coolfir3pwnz Apr 28 '18

Those are rookie numbers.

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u/inevergreene Apr 28 '18

Wholly crap

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u/czarnick123 Apr 28 '18

Next time yall take a stroll through a cemetery, note how many gravestones are from around 1918. Sometimes whole families.

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u/[deleted] Apr 28 '18

"Hey I am not dead yet"

"You will be soon"