Bill Gates warns there will be 'lots of additional' COVID deaths - News Today

Bill Gates warned Americans that there will be devastating number of additional COVID-19 deaths if the country doesn't 'get our act together.' Gates continued to rail against the country's pandemic response, which has lagged significantly behind other countries. He previously cautioned in April - when cases neared 336,000 and deaths just topped 9,600 - that the United States could stumble into a 'nightmare scenario' with the pandemic, but assured that following proper social distance guidelines would curb infections. But six months later - after cases skyrocketed to 7.6million and deaths to 213,000 - Gates appeared on NBC's Meet the Press to reiterate the gravity of the situation.'There are lots of additional deaths coming if we don’t get our act together,' Gates told anchor Chuck Todd in the upcoming interview on Sunday. Gates, 64, pivoted his critiques to the country's backlogged COVID-19 testing system, which has been blasted over the prolonged wait for results.'We are running the worst testing system, in terms of who gets access to it, of any country,' he said. 'And that's not that hard to fix.'The Microsoft billionaire called on the Trump administration to take accountability for its missteps and correct the course of action. Share this article Share 'You do have to admit that you haven’t done a good job, and make some straightforward changes,' Gates said on Meet the Press.'In that case, just the way the reimbursement is done is crazy. So there is an ability to, in terms of leadership that helps with the right behaviors, to protect people. 'We can still do a lot better. Other than funding research, we fall very low in terms of… the quality of our response, which is the opposite of what you would’ve expected. 'And so there’ll be a lot of work in the post-mortem. Why didn’t we pay attention to the warnings? Why did we de-staff the positions that would’ve worked in these areas?'Gates said that although there should be accountability, playing the blame game should not be the country's focus right now. 'But, you know, just trying to assess blame is not what the focus should be now. The focus should be now is get the diagnostics right,' he said.Gates added that the FDA is under intense pressure to produce a viable vaccine, and that officials should get it to everyone 'with the right message - including getting it to the world so the disease isn't constantly coming back in to our country.' Cranking out a vaccine has been a top priority for the Trump administration as they attempt to drum up more support before the contentious election.Trump admitted that a vaccine won't be available until after the election, but still contended it would be coming 'very, very