Bill Gates urged the world to prepare for new viruses and bioterrorist attack

Sergey Kron

According to the BBC, in an interview with representatives of the British public organization Policy Exchange, Bill Gates excitedly spoke about the fact that in order to counter new threats, world powers will have to spend billions of dollars on research in the field of epidemiological safety and the development of specific mechanisms to combat infectious diseases.

Gates called on the World Health Organization to create a special working group to monitor the epidemiological situation. "This structure can prepare humanity for possible attacks by bioterrorists, practicing scenarios for eliminating their consequences," - said the founder of Microsoft.

Gates explains the importance of preventing the threat of terrorist attacks with the use of biological weapons as follows: “What if bioterrorists bring smallpox to 10 airports in the world? Do we know how the world can respond to this? There are naturally occurring epidemics and epidemics caused by bioterrorism. The latter may be even worse than the one we are experiencing now".

However, according to Gates, the huge costs required to combat future pandemics could bring other results to humanity, for example, getting rid of the flu and colds.

“The good news is that the research and development needed to fight the next pandemic is things like cheapening vaccines, setting up large factories to make them, eradicating influenza and colds, making vaccines in the form of a small sticker on the arm. All of this will be incredibly useful even at a time when we do not have pandemics”, - says Gates.

Many are surprised: does Bill Gates have such a broad knowledge of medicine and virology? The fact is that 21 years ago, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation was created in the United States, which finances various medical projects, including the development of vaccines against Covid-19.

No one today can blame one of the richest people in the world for being greedy - in previous years, a businessman and his wife invested more than $ 50 billion out of their own pockets to make vaccines against various diseases more affordable in the poorest countries of the world.

In 2015, at the TED (Technology, Entertainment, Design) conference, Bill Gates warned: "If anything kills more than 10 million people over the next few decades, it will most likely be a highly pathogenic virus, not war" ...

According to the latest UN data, as a result of the coronavirus pandemic, more than 5 million people have died in the world, almost 250 million have become ill.

When and where were biological weapons used?

No wonder they say about Gates that he spends five hours a day in his own library. Apparently, therefore, he is well aware of the fact that the prohibition of bacteriological weapons was established by the Geneva Protocol of 1925, which was ratified by over 60 states, including the USSR and the USA. The United States, Japan, Brazil and some other countries have not ratified the protocol providing for mutual control mechanisms. And no one knows what is going on in their secret laboratories.

Nevertheless, there are known cases of the use of bacteriological weapons in the 20th century.

During the First World War, German agents on some fronts tried to infect horses with the pathogen of glanders at the location of the enemy. In South America, livestock were infected with anthrax pathogens and sent to France.

Before World War II, Japan and Nazi Germany secretly prepared for the use of bacteriological weapons in the Far East, which was confirmed at the Nuremberg trials and in 1949 by the materials of the Khabarovsk tribunal.

The Japanese organized a secret scientific center under the direction of the microbiologist Shiro Ishii, where they developed strains of pathogens - typhus, plague, cholera. Inhuman experiments were carried out on Chinese, Soviet and Korean prisoners of war. The fact of the use of bacteriological weapons in the battles against the Soviet Union and Mongolia in 1939 is known. Special detachments of volunteer suicide bombers infected the Argun, Khalkin-Gol and Khulusutai rivers with several infections at once - typhoid fever, anthrax, plague, cholera. As a result, dozens of soldiers and officers of the Soviet-Mongolian troops died from dangerous infections. The remaining 700 cases were saved.

Another event when bacteriological weapons were used was the battle of Changde in 1941 during the Sino-Japanese War. Plague-infected fleas and tons of grain - rat bait - were dropped on the city and its environs from the plane. As a result, an epidemic broke out that killed nearly 8,000 Changde residents in 4 months.

In a crucial battle with the fascist troops ... field mice came out on the side of the Soviet Union. According to the plan of the Chekists, the rodents delivered to the location of the German tanks were supposed to damage the wiring in them and disable the equipment. In addition, mice became carriers of tularemia, a bacterial infection that causes fever and general intoxication of the body. It rarely leads to a lethal outcome, but it is quite capable of bringing the enemy out of a combat-ready state.

In early November 1942, before the Red Army was preparing for the offensive, the mice were sent on an "operation." They simply looked for heat and food, and thus climbed into tanks and gnawed at the insulation of electrical circuits. A significant part of the tanks were indeed disabled, and the Nazis who fell ill were few. German doctors quickly established the reason for their incapacity and returned the soldiers to the ranks.

In the 1960s, American troops used certain types of bacteriological weapons during the aggression in South Vietnam, in particular, to destroy rice and other crops.

In 2000, the so-called bioterrorism became widespread. In the United States, anthrax spores have been found in the post office through which correspondence for the White House passes. This resulted in the deaths of several postal workers in Washington DC.

On another occasion, FBI agents found anthrax in the Capitol building - and the lawmakers were evacuated. Leading US television broadcasters, the Pentagon and the CIA headquarters in Langley have all become victims of terrorist attacks in the aftermath.

Bioterror from the United States spread to other countries. The mail brought the white powder to one of the offices of the Parliament of Canada and to the London Stock Exchange. The then German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder, employees of the National Economic Agency of France, and several research laboratories in Israel received a dangerous package.

With the advent of Covid-19, many versions were built about the origin of the virus that hit the whole world. Many experts to this day believe that there was a leak from a secret laboratory of the Institute of Virology of the highest level of security, located in the Chinese city of Wuhan. However, neither the CIA nor the WHO were able to prove this. The investigation is ongoing.