Skip to main content

Bill Gates: Things can start returning to normal by June — if we ‘get our act together’

 

Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates thinks the U.S. may be able to start relaxing coronavirus shutdowns and getting back to normal by the end of May or early June — but doesn’t know what that “normal” will look like.

Recommended Videos

“If we get our act together and if the compliance is very high … by early June, we’ll be looking at some type of opening up,” Gates said in an interview with CNBC Wednesday. “We’re gonna have this intermediate period of opening up, and it won’t be normal until we get an amazing vaccine to the entire world.” 

Gates also said that while he thinks school is out for the rest of this school year, he believes students will be able to resume their studies, as usual, this fall. 

Bill Gates
Bill Gates delivers a speech in 2019. NurPhoto / Contributor

But when it comes to activities like sporting events or other larger group gatherings, Gates is unsure of when those can come back. 

“The discussion of which activities bring societal value and how much risk of rebound they bring, that’s something everybody should participate in,” he said. “I don’t think going to big public sports-type events — that the economic benefits relative to the risk will work out until we are back into normal times.” 

Gates has been outspoken about taking the coronavirus, officially called COVID-19, seriously. His foundation, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, is even working on a vaccine, which he also talked about in Thursday’s interview. 

He said that the foundation is interested in the RNA vaccine approach, which makes disease-fighting antigens inside the body, rather than in a lab. 

“If everything goes perfectly with the RNA approach, we can actually beat the 18 months estimated for how long it will take to create a vaccine,” he said  

In the past, Gates said that vaccines must be a priority and that multiple efforts are going on to produce a successful vaccine. 

“We will have to build lots of manufacturing for the different approaches knowing that some of them will not work. We will need literally billions of vaccines to protect the world,” he said during a Reddit Ask Me Anything session last month. 

Gates has pledged to spend billions of dollars investing in factories to make vaccines, despite knowing that he may lose much of the investment on cures that don’t pan out.

For the latest updates on the novel coronavirus outbreak, visit the World Health Organization’s COVID-19 page.

Allison Matyus
Former Digital Trends Contributor
Allison Matyus is a general news reporter at Digital Trends. She covers any and all tech news, including issues around social…
This modular Pebble and Apple Watch underdog just smashed funding goals
UNA Watch

Both the Pebble Watch and Apple Watch are due some fierce competition as a new modular brand, UNA, is gaining some serous backing and excitement.

The UNA Watch is the creation of a Scottish company that wants to give everyone modular control of smartwatch upgrades and repairs.

Read more
Tesla, Warner Bros. dodge some claims in ‘Blade Runner 2049’ lawsuit, copyright battle continues
Tesla Cybercab at night

Tesla and Warner Bros. scored a partial legal victory as a federal judge dismissed several claims in a lawsuit filed by Alcon Entertainment, a production company behind the 2017 sci-fi movie Blade Runner 2049, Reuters reports.
The lawsuit accused the two companies of using imagery from the film to promote Tesla’s autonomous Cybercab vehicle at an event hosted by Tesla CEO Elon Musk at Warner Bros. Discovery (WBD) Studios in Hollywood in October of last year.
U.S. District Judge George Wu indicated he was inclined to dismiss Alcon’s allegations that Tesla and Warner Bros. violated trademark law, according to Reuters. Specifically, the judge said Musk only referenced the original Blade Runner movie at the event, and noted that Tesla and Alcon are not competitors.
"Tesla and Musk are looking to sell cars," Reuters quoted Wu as saying. "Plaintiff is plainly not in that line of business."
Wu also dismissed most of Alcon's claims against Warner Bros., the distributor of the Blade Runner franchise.
However, the judge allowed Alcon to continue its copyright infringement claims against Tesla for its alleged use of AI-generated images mimicking scenes from Blade Runner 2049 without permission.
Alcan says that just hours before the Cybercab event, it had turned down a request from Tesla and WBD to use “an icononic still image” from the movie.
In the lawsuit, Alcon explained its decision by saying that “any prudent brand considering any Tesla partnership has to take Musk’s massively amplified, highly politicized, capricious and arbitrary behavior, which sometimes veers into hate speech, into account.”
Alcon further said it did not want Blade Runner 2049 “to be affiliated with Musk, Tesla, or any Musk company, for all of these reasons.”
But according to Alcon, Tesla went ahead with feeding images from Blade Runner 2049 into an AI image generator to yield a still image that appeared on screen for 10 seconds during the Cybercab event. With the image featured in the background, Musk directly referenced Blade Runner.
Alcon also said that Musk’s reference to Blade Runner 2049 was not a coincidence as the movie features a “strikingly designed, artificially intelligent, fully autonomous car.”

Read more
Apple TV+ just got a price slash that’s tough to resist, and it won’t last long
The Apple TV main screen.

Apple has just quietly announced that it will be slashing the price on its Apple TV+ offering for a limited time deal.

While Apple prices the service at a standard $9.99 per month usually, it has just cut that way down to $2.99 per month.

Read more