Bill Gates says ‘all of 2022’ possibly needed for post-virus normalcy, jabs ‘denial administration’

Bill Gates says Americans can blame the “denial administration” if a post-COVID-19 return to normalcy takes “all of 2022.” 

The billionaire philanthropist used a recent CNN appearance to rhetorically jab the former Trump administration and “rich countries” over their response to the global pandemic. 

“Sadly, the CDC fell short a tiny bit with the initial tasks,” Mr. Gates told the network’s Fareed Zakaria over the weekend. “It’s too bad that the vaccine rollout started under the same sort of ’denial administration,’ and now it’s harder to get it back in place, but the supply and logistics will not be limiting within about three months here in the United States.”

Mr. Gates’ criticism attributed the actual creation of COVID-19 vaccines, which critics of the Trump administration’s “Operation: Warp Speed” said would be impossible before the Republican left office, to “a miracle.” 

“The big problem is that we’re not doing enough to end the pandemic globally,” he added. 

Mr. Gates warned that COVID-19 variants could complicate society’s return to normal if vaccines, for all intents and purposes, “just [keep] going to rich countries.” 

Previous criticism by the billionaire activist included the claim that Mr. Trump was too lax in asserting federal power over various states after the pandemic reached U.S. shores.  

“It’s kind of weird that the CDC, throughout this epidemic, hasn’t had the visible role that you would have expected,” he told NBC News in December. “A lot of these things delegated to the states, the execution will not be what it should be. But overall, I do think we’ll get it out. It’s just the federal government has abdicated on many things during this pandemic.”

Mr. Trump has consistently rejected such critiques as absurd and unfair. 

“Joe Biden is only implementing the plan that we put in place,” he recently told an Orlando audience attending the Conservative Political Action Conference. “If we had an honest media, which we don’t, they would say it loud and clear. By the time I left that magnificent house at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, almost 20 million Americans had already been vaccinated. One-point-five million doses were administered on my final day alone — 1.5 million in a day. Yet Biden said just a few days ago that when he got here, meaning The White House, there was no vaccine.

“The distribution is moving along, according to our plan. And it’s moving along really well. We had the military, what they’ve done, our generals and all of the people, what they’ve done is incredible.”