It is less a matter of Bill Gates’ expertise on epidemiology and public health (although he does appear to be quite well read on that topic as well as many others, which is a privilege you get to enjoy when you’ve build a multibillion dollar company and have the time to devote your intellect to more interesting things) than the fact that he is a very well known figure by the general public who has been a philanthropist in the domain of global public health initiatives for going on a couple of decades. It doesn’t hurt that he is also reasonably good at making public health and combatting infectious disease comprehensible to the general public.
There are, of course, professions actually working in the field of public health and infectious disease research whose knowledge and experience far eclipses dilettantes such as Gates, but despite the recent meteoric celebrity of Dr. Anthony Fauci, as of six months ago you’d be hard pressed to find one person in a hundred who had actually heard of him despite the fact that he’s been the Captain America of the infectious disease world for thirty-odd years and has been involved in addressing nearly every disease epidemic in the Western Hemisphere, not only directing NIAID but working in the field with patients, publishing papers, and co-editing a widely read series of handbooks on the topics of allergies and infectious disease. Fauci has appeared on countless news programs and public briefings warning about the possibility of a global pandemic outbreak and people forget ten minutes after the episode of 60 Minutes is over, but Bill Gates does one twenty minute on the global threat of infectious disease and it becomes one of the most widely viewed TED Talks in history. There is something to be said for celebrity when it is used to bring attention to a crucial issue.
I don’t personally care for Gates’ legacy as a businessman or the mediocre products his company has spawned upon the world (did anyone ask for Microsoft Teams?) but as a philanthropist he’s certainly committed his fortune to improving conditions for the billions living in extreme poverty and lacking basic necessities. As for the publicity he receives from news heads, he does not appear to use it to try to hawk products or stoke his own ego, and I have yet to hear him say anything incorrect or materially misleading on the topic of infectious disease
Stranger