Trevor Noah of
The Daily Show did a 22 minute interview Bill Gates on April 2. The YouTube recording is here
https://youtu.be/iyFT8qXcOrM The topic of his prediction comes up almost right away.
The interview gave me good insight about what has to be done, how long it will take and what things will be like till then. Gates goes into the nuances of the problem, not just the sound bites or the same old stuff we've been hearing for a month. A few points that I took from the interview.....
There isn't a choice between lives and the economy. Regulations or not, as of now, 80% of people will choose to not mingle. The other 20% can't support the economy.
If we went back to normal (imagine concerts and sporting events), the virus would go back to doubling every 3 days.
People won't be fully comfortable until after vaccines are available. Global comfort will require global distribution. Gates predicts this will start in 12-18 months and finish within a few years. I hope his models are conservative.
Test results within 24 hours, is key to starting back towards normal. This will prevent exponential growth. There is a lot of work being done here and results should be accelerating by early summer. Crowded events will still not be common.
Most governments don't know or aren't efficient enough to ramp up the testing and vaccine manufacturing process quickly, which is why the Gates foundation stepped in to hasten the bootstrap. Gates believes that government funding will ramp up vaccine volume once the right tests and drugs are proven. He mentions that a few billion invested to save a trillion is worth it. His laugh is priceless as he explains that a trillion is 1000 billion.
Masks will likely be commonplace, once manufacturing catches up.
Some countries, especially third world, will be shunned until they make it through the process of distributing the vaccine (where 1-3% of the population will still catch it) or herd immunity (60-80% need to catch it).
For me, the nuances and Gates' deep experience is what makes this interview worth watching. He's a rich guy with a passion about epidemics and global health in general. While Bill Gates had my ire while he was a ruthless business person at Microsoft, I have a lot of respect and trust in what he is doing now.