Bill Gates Touts China ‘Extreme Intervention’ Coronavirus Efforts — ‘They Were Able to Crush That Epidemic’

During an interview that aired on Thursday’s broadcast of CNBC’s “Squawk Box,” Microsoft co-founder and co-chair of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation Bill Gates was asked to react to other efforts around the globe to take on coronavirus, particularly China, a country that proclaimed to have moved past the height of the pandemic.

Gates’ labeled Mainland China’s efforts as “extreme intervention,” describing the outcome as having been able to “crush that epidemic.”

“China took the situation in Wuhan, which was quite dramatic, and by extreme intervention in terms of reducing movement — they were able to crush that epidemic,” Gate said. “Those hospitals are gone. Look at the commerce. Stores are open now in China and nowhere else, whereas before, it was the opposite. It’s a real thing that they took a significant number of cases — not only flattened it but brought it down to very small levels.”

He predicted there could be a rebound in China, and added that careful consideration should be applied to what should be opened back up in these circumstances.

“Now if they open up, there will be slight rebounds, and it’s very valuable for them to share where that’s happening because all of the countries that have substantial epidemics now have to think, ‘OK, once you get down to the absolute level — before having a vaccine, what kind of activities should we reengage in? You know, probably manufacturing. We can do probably construction. We can do probably because of the number of young people involved — we can do education. But we’re going to have this intermediate period of opening back up, and it won’t be normal until we get this amazing vaccine to the entire world.”

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