Bill Gates believes that a pandemic caused by a mosquito-borne illness is a greater threat than global warfare ... see: Daily Mail Article. Perhaps so. Now Bill Gates is either the richest man in the world or close to it with assets nearing $100 billion. So this pandemic threat offers his charitable instincts a perfect opportunity to go big.
Consider the following. Mosquitoes can be eliminated by first breeding them in captivity, sterilizing them with irradiation and then releasing them back into the wild to hook up to no end. Now, of course, this is not cheap. Let's assume that $10 million could fund such a program in a targeted locale ... and that one could identify a thousand such targets in the tropical and semi-tropical regions of the world. OK, maybe you would have to repeat things to eliminate the three sigma stragglers. So, for 20 billion dollars, Bill Gates could, if the environmentalists didn't rise up to object, wipe out mosquitoes from the face of the Earth ... and, at the same time eliminate Zika, malaria, yellow fever and a host of other pestilences.
Wouldn't that be a memorable use of just a small portion of the Gates fortune? He and Melinda might still have $80 billion left to live on or donate to things like the Clinton Foundation.
Why doesn't the US skip a couple new fighter jets and aircraft carriers to do this? As a taxpayer, I'd pay in a $100 to this initiative instead of more war machinery.
ReplyDeleteYou should send this to Mr. Gates.
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