Bill Gates, who just stepped down from the Microsoft Board to focus on philanthropy, went on Reddit this week to answer questions about the coronavirus pandemic. And perhaps unsurprisingly, lots of the queries involve China, where the outbreak first started.
Gates, whose philanthropic efforts focus partly on health care, said China’s response to Covid-19 has been effective. “After January 23 when [China] realized how serious it was they did strong social isolation which made a huge difference,” he wrote. “Of course that isolation created a lot of difficulties for the people involved but they were able to stop the case spread.”
He emphasized the importance of testing potential patients, citing China and South Korea as examples. “If a country does a good job with testing and ‘shut down’ then within 6-10 weeks they should see very few cases and be able to open back up,” he said.
He also said people “should not call this the Chinese virus,” in response to a Redditor who referred to the coronavirus by the term, which has also been used by US President Donald Trump.