RUSH TRANSCRIPT:
TAPPER: “30 million of California are under brand-new stay-at-home orders as hospitals there risk being overwhelmed. There are a lot of governors who oppose bringing back these lockdown orders and forcing businesses to close. What do you think? Do you think more states need to consider taking that kind of drastic action and the kind of drastic action we saw when the pandemic first began, or can there be a more nuance approach?”
GATES: “Well, certainly mask wearing has essentially no downside. They are not expensive. Bars and restaurants, in most of the country, will be closed as we go into this wave and I think, sadly, that is appropriate. Depending on how severe it is, the decision about schools is much more complicated because they are — the benefits are pretty high, the amount of transmission is not the same as in restaurants and bars. So, you know, tradeoffs will have to be made, but the next four to six months really call on us to do our best because we can see that this will end and you don’t want, you know, somebody you love to be the last to die of Coronavirus.”
TAPPER: “When do you think life will fully return to what we thought of as normal back in January? No masks, no social distancing, no other protective measures necessary.”
GATES: “Certainly, by the summer will be way closer to normal than we are now, but even through early 2022, unless we help other countries get rid of this disease and we get high vaccinations rates in our country, the risk of reintroduction will be there and, of course, the global economy will be slowed down, which hurts America economically in a pretty dramatic way. So we will have, starting in the summer, about nine months where a few things like big public gatherings will still be restricted. But we can see now that somewhere between 12 to 18 months, we have a chance, if we manage it well, to get back to normal.”