Areas Of Expertise

It’s a common flaw in society to think that because someone is a success in one specific area that that success can be applied with equal weight in other areas.  The classic example is that of Albert Einstein:  brilliant mathematician, but political idiot.

How much credence, then, are we to give to this asshole?

Bill Gates forecasts another global pandemic ‘likely’ within next 25 years in ominous health warning.

Even worse, he conflates two unrelated scenarios:

War or another global pandemic, Microsoft CEO Bill Gates is cautioning that, if the world manages to avoid the former, the latter is a very real possibility within the next 25 years.

“A lot of unrest” in today’s age could spark a major war.

“If we avoid a big war … then, yes, there will be another pandemic, most likely in the next 25 years,” he continued.

And if we do have a big war, does that mean there won’t be a pandemic, you moron?

I should like to remind everyone that back in the early 1980s, Gates completely missed the oncoming tidal wave of personal computing, and in fact pooh-poohed the entire concept, saying that he saw that there’d be fewer than half a dozen PCs in existence, and that all humanity’s computing needs could be addressed by mainframe computers — to be fair, quite a common thought among Big Iron believers of the time.

So if he could be that spectacularly wrong in his own field, why should we believe anything he says about pandemics?

As they say, to ask the question is to answer it.

13 comments

  1. Are you conflating Gates with the chairman of IBM (Watson?) who in the 50s said there would only be half a dozen mainframes?

    The Bill & Melinda Gates foundation does serious work in tropical diseases, BTW.

    1. “The Bill & Melinda Gates foundation does serious work in tropical diseases, BTW.”

      What kind of work? Creating new ones, or just spreading existing ones? I’m incredibly hesitant to accept any so-called altruistic works from people who claimed the world is over-populated.

  2. As a chemical engineer in production, I’ve had the pleasure of working with lots and lots of PhD types over the years. Some were incredibly brilliant (in their field) and some were absolute morons (across many fields), but such is life. But yeah, it is really weird to work around someone who is incredibly smart only to hear the stupidest things come out of their mouth the minute the conversation strays from their chosen topic. It’s also quite common (I’m subject to this also) for someone who’s really smart in one area to think they are smart in all other areas. And to be able to speak with an air of authority too. If you can successfully mimic that tone, you too can put on a white lab coat and state with authority that 4 out of 5 dentists recommend this flavor of bubblegum.

    I can give plenty of examples, but one individual really takes the cake. On a moment’s notice, he can produce charts and graphs “proving” that DEI really does add value to a business. I’ve yet to take the bait and tell him that 100% of the DEI he encounters in his work field is strictly the top 1% of the top 1%, so to speak. He never deals with the morons, only the DEI candidates with multiple degrees and the necessary drive to leave whatever shithole country they were born to legally immigrate here. He’s never had to work with Shaniqwua and her long nails in a lab setting before, and likely he never will.

  3. Pandemics are a lot more common that we generally recognize, because they are rarely weaponized by the left like SARS-CoV-2 was.

    There was a flu epidemic in 1957-58. Another one in 1968-68. Some people consider HIV/AIDS to be a pandemic, that started in 1981. Then you have SARS-CoV-2 in 2019. So that’s either 3 or 4 in the last 80 ish years.

    If you look at the list of pandemics going back 200 years, eyeballing it (too early for math) it looks like “25 years” is a reasonable prediction.

    Gates wasn’t the one who said there wouldn’t be that many PCs out there, he was the one that said “640k will be enough for anyone”.

    1. I’m just gonna say it: Elon Musk is an entirely different order of person distinct from all the others on that list. Dude has a plan, and it carrying it off. He is almost singlehandedly inventing the future our government promised and then denied, like Lucy with the football. Screw the governments of the world, they are not the answer or the key to humanity’s future.

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