Bill Gates Just Predicted When He Thinks The Pandemic Will Finally End

Bill Gates has just predicted when he believes we will see the end of the ongoing coronavirus pandemic.

In a recent blog post entitled Reasons for optimism after a difficult year, the Microsoft co-founder admitted that 2021 had been ‘the most unusual and difficult year of my life’, remarking ‘my personal world has never felt smaller than it did over the last twelve months’.

Because of the Delta variant and challenges with vaccine uptake, we’re not as close to the end of the pandemic as I hoped by now.

I didn’t foresee that such a highly transmissible variant would come along, and I underestimated how tough it would be to convince people to take the vaccine and continue to use masks.

[…] I am hopeful, though, that the end is finally in sight. It might be foolish to make another prediction, but I think the acute phase of the pandemic will come to a close some time in 2022.

Although Gates admits ‘the Omicron variant is concerning’, he remains ‘hopeful that, at some point next year, COVID-19 will become an endemic disease in most places’.

Envisioning what this might look like, Gates suggested:

Communities will still see occasional outbreaks, but new drugs will be available that could take care of most cases and hospitals will be able to handle the rest.

Your individual risk level will be low enough that you won’t need to factor it into your decision-making as much. It won’t be primary when deciding whether to work from the office or let your kids go to their soccer game or watch a movie in a theatre.