Bill Gates Calls for Shutdown of Bars and Restaurants, Claims COVID Risk Will Last Until 2022
Microsoft founder Bill Gates said that he is all in favor of shutting down bars and restaurants to deal with the coronavirus.
Gates was interviewed Sunday on CNN. Host Jake Tapper asked Gates to offer his thoughts on whether strict lockdowns should remain in force.
“Mask-wearing has essentially no downside,” Gates said. “They’re not expensive.”
As for many endangered small businesses, Gates said they should remain shuttered.
.@BillGates on Covid: “Even through 2022” we should be prepared for life to not return to “normal”
Says “sadly” it’s “appropriate” for bars and restaurants to close over the next “four to six months” pic.twitter.com/cmDD8pv3XR
— Tom Elliott (@tomselliott) December 13, 2020
“Bars and restaurants — in most of the country — will be closed as we go into this wave, and I think, sadly, that’s appropriate,” Gates said.
“Depending upon how severe it is, the decision about schools is much more complicated because the benefits are pretty high, the amount of transmission is not the same as in restaurants and bars, so trade-offs will have to be made.”
Gates said that he views the next few months as a crucial time.
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“The next four to six months really call on us to do our best, because we can see that this will end and you don’t want somebody that you love to be the last to die of coronavirus.”
Asked about when life will return to pre-pandemic normal, he said that the summer of 2021 will be a beginning.
“Certainly by the summer we’ll be way closer to normal than we are now,” he said.
“But even through early 2022, unless we help other countries get rid of this disease, and we get high vaccination rates in our country, the risk of reintroduction will be there and, of course, the global economy will be slowed down, which hurts America economically in a pretty dramatic way.”
“So we’ll have starting in the summer we’ll have about nine months where a few things, like big public gatherings, will still be restricted, but we can see now that somewhere between 12 and 18 months, we have a chance, if we manage it well, to get back to normal,” he added.
Many pushed back against what Gates had to say.
Man not losing a dime and probably making money during Covid says what to struggling business owners? ? should be their reply
— commonsense (@commonsense258) December 13, 2020
Why are asking these questions to Bill Gates? Is he a doctor? The guy is a billionaire and he is asking people to close their business. ????
— Yaniel Mesa (@yanielm10) December 13, 2020
Says the billionaire to the small business owner, wait staff, vendors/farmers who supply these restaurants.
— bsharif (@beasharif) December 13, 2020
Monday marked the first day in which Americans were given a COVID-19 vaccine developed by Pfizer and BioNTech.
“I feel hopeful today,” said Sandra Lindsay, a critical care nurse at Long Island Jewish Medical Center, according to USA Today.
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This article appeared originally on The Western Journal.
