Hitting out at anti-mask protestors or people who choose to not wear masks and comply with the coronavirus health norms, Microsoft co-founder and Amercian philanthropist Bill Gates jokingly compared those people with ‘nudists’.
In a podcast interview, ‘Bill Gates and Rashida Jones Ask Big Questions’, Gates and the actress and comedian were discussing the issue of politicizing masks in America and what a “weird thing" that is.
“I mean what are these, like, nudists?" asked Gates.
He further compared the situation with that of wearing ‘pants’.
The billionaire, who has donated millions of dollars for research of a covid vaccine said, “We ask you to wear pants and, you know, no American says — or very few Americans say — that that’s, like, some terrible thing," reports Huffpost.
During the interview, Gates also explained how the view changed from not needing masks to needing them. He explained that earlier health experts would compare covid with other common cold including flue, fever etc. But covid turned out to be very different from how the other viruses spread.
“These unbelievable viral loads that you see with the coronavirus don’t occur with most of the other respiratory viruses," Gates said, as per a Business Insider report.
While a person with common cold can afford to stay without a mask in a room with other healthy people, covid patients can’t.
Gates also cited a recent research by the University of Washington’s Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation, that showed ‘if everybody wore masks over 100,000 death can be avoided’.
Jones and Gates also spoke to Dr Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases and a spearhead of the battle against coronavirus, who stated that “wearing a mask, keeping a distance, avoiding crowds, being outdoors as much as you possibly can — weather permitted — and washing your hands" are the only ways to walk into a post-covid world.
All throughout Jones agreed and reiterated that you either wear a mask or you don’t and stay at home — “you kind of have to just deal with what it is."
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