This is Squawk Pod. I'm C. NBC producer Katie Kramer. Today on our

podcast Bill Gates, did he warn us about the COVID-19 pandemic?

Here with coronavirus, it's quite fatal and quite transmissible.

So it's the nightmare that we'd been talking about for a long time.

The billionaire philanthropist and Microsoft co-founder talks to our own Becky Quick about the race for a coronavirus vaccine.

There's an approach called the RNA vaccine that people like Moderna,

cure vac, and others are using that in 2015 we'd identified that as very promising for

pandemics and for other applications as well.

And so if everything goes perfectly with the RNA approach,

we could actually beat the 18 months.

And Gates on the economy, how soon is too soon to go back to work.

Until we can say to people that we're tracking this thing so well that actually going

out to your job to a car factory to a construction site that those are safe enough

until we get there, which we're absolutely not,

no one should think the government can wave a wand

and all of a sudden,

you know, the economy is anything like it was before this happened.

It's Thursday April 9th 2020 squawkpot with Bill Gates begins right after this.

This is Squawk Pod from C NBC and today we're bringing you a special conversation with Bill Gates,

the Microsoft co-founder and billionaire philanthropist on the worldwide spread of coronavirus.

I caught up with Becky Quick. All right, Becky, we're on Zoom today talking about Bill Gates.

Well, Bill Gates has been looking into viruses. I think it's just kind of one of his hobbies.

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