Bill and Melinda Gates have been 'storing food in basement for years' fearing coronavirus-like pandemic
Melinda Gates has revealed that she and husband Bill stored food in their basement years ago in anticipation that a pandemic like this one was going to afflict humanity.
Appearing recently on BBC Radio Live, Melinda told host Emma Barnett about her preparations for an outbreak and how they had prepared for a worst-case scenario where there would have been no water or food.
"What does that mean in terms of — because we had issues here in the UK with people panic shopping — how does a couple like you, who has this insight, how do you get prepared for that?" Barnett asked.
"A number of years ago, we had talked about, 'What if there wasn’t clean water? What if there wasn’t enough food? Where might we go? What might we do as a family?'" Melinda Gates shared.
"So, I think we should leave those preparations to ourselves. But absolutely, we had prepared and had some food in the basement in case needed, and now we’re all in the same situation. There are no tools. There is nothing we could do specifically to prepare ourselves with a particular drug or vaccine."
Melinda co-founded The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, which announced it would be joining forces with Wellcome and Mastercard to respond to the epidemic.
The organization said they had earmarked $125 million in both new funding and money that would be used to identify potential treatments for Covid-19, accelerate their development, and prepare for the manufacture of millions of doses for use worldwide in a project dubbed "COVID-19 Therapeutics Accelerator."
Melinda said she was aware of how lucky she and her family were compared to the millions who had been devastated by Covid-19.
"This is a disease we're all in together," she said. "And what we talk about in our home every night is how lucky we are, we understand our privilege. And when we say grace at night, what we're thankful for around the table, is that we aren't struggling to put a meal on the table, as so many families around the world are."
The 55-year-old also addressed how the pandemic meant that wearing masks could very likely become a common habit around the world and that she all but stopped going out while self-isolating.
"Thinking about the new norm, do you think [people wearing masks] is something we will see as part of our day to day lives here in the UK and in America?" Barnett asked.
"I think it's very likely," Melinda responded. "I mean, we're seeing it certainly in China and South Korea, people wearing masks in public. And so, if that's the worst thing we have to do, I think that's something that we just adopt as a community."
"I'm certainly seeing it much more, all over Seattle," she continued. "People, if you go out to the grocery store which I'm not doing very much because we're supposed to be home. But certainly, people are physically distanced outside the grocery store by six feet before they go in and everybody has a mask on."
"And so we might be in that situation maybe for 18 months or two years."