Bill Gates says China 'did a lot of things right' in tackling pandemic and Trump's blame game is a distraction
Even as the US upped the ante against China over the origin of the coronavirus pandemic and accused it of allowing the outbreak to start from a lab in Wuhan, Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates decided to defend Beijing, saying it "did a lot of things right".
The 64-year-old philanthropist has been making headlines regularly during the pandemic for his initial warning against the world's under-preparedness for pandemics and has been spending billions from his own pocket to quicken the process of getting a vaccine to cure the disease.
The US is home to almost a third of COVID-19 patients globally with its tally approaching a million. Over 54,000 have died in the US which also makes it the nation with the biggest death toll.
Speaking to CNN’s Fareed Zakaria who sought his response to the charge that China covered up facts about the disease and lied over its transmissibility and should be held responsible, Gates said: “Well, I don't think that's a timely thing because it doesn't affect how we act today."
"You know, China did a lot of things right. In the beginning, like any country where a virus first shows up, they can look back and say that they missed some things," he added.
"Some countries did respond very quickly and get their testing in place, and they avoided the incredible economic pain — and it's sad that even the US that you would have expected to do this well, did it particularly poorly — but it's not time to talk about that," Gates said.
Gates has rued in the past saying the US got its act of enforcing the shutdown delayed.
He then said in the interview that this is the time "to take the great science we have, the fact that we're in this together, fix testing and treatments and get that vaccine, and minimize the trillions in dollars and many things that you can't even dimensionalize in economic terms that are awful about the situation that we're in."
Blaming China is a distraction
The billionaire even felt that blaming China is a "distraction" and felt a lot of "incorrect" and "unfair" things were said. The tussle between the US and China over the outbreak of the pandemic has turned serious in recent times.
Beijing refused to allow international inspectors to visit its labs to assess the situation despite a plea from the US. Meanwhile, in the US, lawmakers have brought bills where people can sue the Chinese government for allegedly misleading the world and allowing mammoth losses to happen — in terms of lives and jobs.
The state of Missouri has already filed a lawsuit against China.
The World Health Organization (WHO) has also drawn the US leadership's ire for allegedly favoring the Chinese that saw President Donald Trump freezing its fund supply to the international health agency earlier this month.
He has called the coronavirus a "Chinese virus" a number of times and also claimed that China's own casualties were much higher than that shown officially. Gates, who himself is one of the biggest donors to the WHO and competes with some of the richest nations, slammed Trump for stopping the fund flow to the WHO.
The software mogul has faced accusations from right-wing voices that have claimed that he is responsible for creating the virus to microchip people so that it is known whether they have been tested.