Who are some non-medical public figures who warned about the possibility of Covid?
Everyone (me included!) now says Covid proves our preconceived ideas right, but who were the writers, thinkers, intellectuals, leaders, activists, etc. who warned about the risk before it happened?
I can only think of Bill Gates. Rather embarrassing for us who are not big fans of him but none of the people I'm a fan of tried to warn us about this.
@LeoSammallahti On Gates...if he knew, given his financial resources, why didn't he take action?
@LeoSammallahti At Gates wealth level, he can make governments listen. (At least in the USA, our politicians are buyable and not that expensive. Gates knows that from the Microsoft antitrust trial.) He could start manufacturing of PPE and respirators. He could fund more research into the viruses.
@LeoSammallahti The bottom line is that Gates needs a profit motive to take action. He isn't a philanthropist, like the media claims, just a disaster capitalist. His pandemic warnings were driven by a desire to increase his wealth, otherwise he would've undertaken the funding he was asking for.
Maybe the reason no other "leaders" spoke out was they couldn't come up with a way to profit from it.
Maybe he needs a profit motive to take action, but where were Chomsky, Naomi Klein, etc.?
Why is it that a greedy capitalist like Gates was trying to warn us about this but all the left wing public figures were ignoring the risk?
I don't know if he can make governments listen that much. He is funding a lot of pro-nuclear stuff but still the US is shutting down nuclear plants and slowing down building new ones.
@LeoSammallahti https://chomsky.info/20170202
Search for "Take pandemics"
Warnings of the next outbreak were present after the "bird-flu" outbreak, and the government did take action.
https://www.politico.com/news/2020/03/25/trump-coronavirus-national-security-council-149285
@lwriemen
To be fair to him I think he did but not much he can do if governments aren't listening.