Gates-funded program will soon offer home-testing kits for new coronavirus

Testing for the novel coronavirus in the Seattle area will get a huge boost in the coming weeks as a project funded by Bill Gates and his foundation begins offering home-testing kits that will allow people who fear they may be infected to swab their noses and send the samples back for analysis.

Results, which should be available in one to two days, will be shared with local health officials who will notify those who test positive. Via online forms, infected people can answer questions about their movements and contacts, making it easier for health officials to locate others who may need to be tested or quarantined, as well as to track the virus’ spread and identify possible hot spots.

The goal is to eventually be able to process thousands of tests a day, said Scott Dowell, leader of coronavirus response at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. The project is ramping up as quickly as possible, but it’s not clear exactly when it will launch, he added. Among other things, software needs to be upgraded to handle the expected crush of requests, and a detailed questionnaire finalized for people who request tests.

“Although there’s a lot to be worked out, this has enormous potential to turn the tide of the epidemic,” Dowell said.

This is an electron microscope image of a lab culture shows novel coronavirus SARS-CoV-2 (orange), emerging from the surface of cells (gray). (NIAID-RML via AP)

While Public Health – Seattle & King County has confirmed 71 cases and 15 deaths as of Saturday,  modeling by Trevor Bedford, a computational biologist at Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center, estimated on Wednesday that the actual number of cases in the Seattle area was about 600. Unchecked, that could theoretically increase to 12,000 cases – and possibly as many as 30,000 – by the end of March, according to projections from Mike Famulare at the Institute for Disease Modeling in Bellevue. But steps to slow transmission can significantly reduce the number of new infections, underscoring the importance of acting quickly to protect people from the virus.

The new effort aims to leverage the formidable resources and expertise of the Gates Foundation, known for fighting disease and epidemics around the globe, to assist local health agencies struggling to keep up with a fast-moving outbreak. The Seattle area has emerged as an epicenter of the new disease, with far more cases and deaths than any other U.S. city.

“One of the most important things from our perspective, having watched and worked on this in other parts of the world, is the identification of people who are positive for the virus, so they can be safely isolated and cared for, and the identification of their contacts, who can then be quarantined,” Dowell said.

But testing has been limited until now, leaving many people frustrated — and frightened. Last week, a laboratory at UW Medicine got approval to begin processing specimens collected by physicians and other health care providers. The Gates-funded project will reduce the need for sick people to visit a doctor’s office or clinic, lowering the chance of exposing others.

The initiative grew out of the Seattle Flu Study, a 2-year-old research project based at the University of Washington to track the spread of infectious diseases like influenza. Funded with $20 million from Bill Gates’ private office, the project recruited thousands of volunteers and sent them self-test kits. The focus has now shifted to the new coronavirus, using similar methods to aid the public-health response.

The expanded testing program to deliver kits to the public will be supported by a separate group within the Gates Foundation. When the system is up and running, people in the Seattle area who think they might be infected with SARS-CoV-2, the scientific name for the new coronavirus, can fill out a questionnaire online. If their symptoms are consistent, they can request a test kit, which will be delivered to their home within two hours. The swabs will be collected and delivered to a lab for processing.

In the meantime, the Seattle Flu Study itself will be increasing its testing capacity to help public health staff investigating the outbreak understand how coronavirus is moving through the community.

The Gates Foundation recently announced it’s committing $5 million for coronavirus response in the Seattle area, and much of that will go for expanded testing and analysis. While the initial focus of the test-kit effort will be on the Seattle area, it could eventually expand statewide – and beyond, Dowell said.

Outside of King County, one person has died and more than 30 infections have been confirmed as of Saturday.

A major goal of the project is to collect as much information as possible online, which will ease the burden on health officials who are stretched thin and hard-pressed to investigate every new case. Local resources have been focused on Life Care Center, the Kirkland nursing home that accounts for the majority of deaths.

“They simply don’t have enough epidemiologists to do the shoe-leather epidemiology, the house-to-house case identification,” Dowell said.

The Seattle Flu Study already has contributed greatly to the understanding of COVID-19, the respiratory disease caused by the new coronavirus. As the outbreak started in China, the scientific team, co-led by Dr. Helen Chu, an infectious-disease specialist at UW Medicine, quickly developed a genetic test for the virus, similar to one they used for flu.

A physician who knew about the work sent in a sample from a teenage patient suspected of having the disease, and the lab was able to identify what was only the second case in the state at that time.

The flu-project scientists also did the first genetic analyses of new coronavirus cases in Washington, and will continue that work. Bedford, the computational biologist, used those first genomes to analyze changes in the virus over time and concluded that it had probably started circulating in the state earlier than anyone realized.

The Seattle Flu Study has also already been collecting nasal swabs from volunteers for a research study on the new coronavirus. People can still sign up for that study, but they cannot get their individual results yet and home-testing kits are not yet available from the new Gates-funded program.

The Seattle Flu Study is led by the Brotman Baty Institute in collaboration with UW Medicine, Fred Hutch and Seattle Children’s hospital.

The Gates Foundation has also committed $100 million to the global coronavirus response, with an emphasis on vaccine and drug development and improved testing, treatment and control in vulnerable parts of Africa and South Asia.

(Source: The Seattle Times)

Bill Gates: Trump twice asked me the difference between HIV and HPV

Microsoft co-founder tells foundation meeting it was ‘kind of scary’ how much Trump knew about what Gates’ daughter looked like

Bill Gates, the billionaire entrepreneur and philanthropist, has claimed Donald Trump twice asked him the difference between HIV and HPV and knew a “scary” amount about Gates’s daughter’s looks.

The remarks were recorded at a recent Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation meeting, where Gates took questions from staff, according to MSNBC’s All in with Chris Hayes show, which broadcast the footage on Thursday.

Gates told the audience how Trump had encountered his daughter Jennifer, now 22, at a horse show in Florida. “And then about 20 minutes later he flew in on a helicopter to the same place,” the Microsoft co-founder said. “So clearly he had been driven away but he wanted to make a grand entrance in a helicopter.”

Gates himself met Trump for the first time in New York in December 2016, he recalled: “So when I first talked to him it was actually kind of scary how much he knew about my daughter’s appearance. Melinda [Gates’s wife] didn’t like that too well.”

Bill Gates said Donald Trump once left an event before returning 20 minutes later in a helicopter, presumably in order to make a ‘grand entrance’. Composite: AFP/AP

They met again in March last year at the White House. Gates continued: “In both of those two meetings, he asked me if vaccines weren’t a bad thing because he was considering a commission to look into ill-effects of vaccines and somebody – I think it was Robert Kennedy Jr – was advising him that vaccines were causing bad things. And I said no, that’s a dead end, that would be a bad thing, don’t do that.

“Both times he wanted to know if there was a difference between HIV and HPV so I was able to explain that those are rarely confused with each other.”

Trump since appears to have abandoned plans to investigate debunked theories linking childhood immunisations and autism. Robert F Kennedy Jr told the Guardian earlier this year that parents and children’s health advocates felt “enormous betrayal and disappointment” at the decision.

The UK’s National Health Service website lists “What’s the difference between HPV and HIV?” as one of its common health questions. It says: “Human papilloma virus (HPV) affects the skin and moist membranes. HPV can cause problems such as verrucas, genital warts and abnormal cell changes in the cervix.

“Human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) attacks the immune system. HIV infection can lead to Aids; however, with early diagnosis and treatment, most people don’t go on to develop Aids.”

Gates is hardly known for his comic timing but he frequently prompted laughter from the audience at the foundation event. In one anecdote he said: “When I walked in, his first sentence kind of threw me off. He said: ‘Trump hears that you don’t like what Trump is doing.’ And I thought, ‘Wow, but you’re Trump.’ I didn’t know the third-party form was always expected. ‘Gates says that Gates knows that you’re not doing things right.’”

Trump has a now-familiar verbal tic of referring to himself in the third person.

Hayes said his show had sought comment from the Gates Foundation but has not yet received a response. Tara Dowdell, Democratic strategist, told the MSNBC host: “We’re looking at a president that doesn’t know the difference between HIV and HPV but he has memorised Bill Gates’ daughter’s appearance.

“So if he spent more time actually learning policy, if he devoted just a quarter of the time that he devotes to harassing women and gawking at women to actual policy, memorising and learning policy, I think the country would be a lot better off.”

(Source: The Guardian)

Inside the marriage of Bill and Melinda Gates

Melinda French was less than impressed when her boss asked her out on a date.

It was 1987, and the recent Duke graduate had just joined Microsoft as a product manager. CEO Bill Gates approached her at a company picnic and asked if she'd be interested in grabbing dinner in two weeks. She responded, "That's not spontaneous enough for me," Fortune reported in 2015.

Fast-forward three decades, and Bill and Melinda Gates are married with three kids, worth $92.2 billion, and run a namesake philanthropic enterprise boasting a $40.3 billion endowment.

Here's a look at their marriage.

At the picnic, Melinda gave Bill her number and told him to call her closer to the day he had in mind.

Instead, he called her up later that night with a wry question: "Is this spontaneous enough for you?" Turns out, it was.

Melinda and Bill dated for seven years before they wed. Melinda told Fortune her mom didn't think that seeing the CEO was a good idea in the beginning.

But the couple didn't listen. Business Insider's Tanza Loudenback reported they "kept a low profile at work and asked colleagues and family members to respect their privacy."

"When I look back, Bill was the same kind of guy I was hanging out with in college," Melinda told Fortune. "I had a lot of respect for them, and they had respect for me."

"I was definitely attracted to his brilliant mind, but beyond that, his curiosity," she told Fortune. "And he has a huge sense of fun. I love that wry side of him."

After they were engaged, Bill and Melinda traveled to Africa in late 1993. During the trip, they encountered people in extreme poverty.

On a walk on a beach in Zanzibar, Melinda told TED in an interview, the couple "started to talk about" how they might use their fortune to help others.

That's when the idea that would ultimately become the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation began to take root. "It's not fair that we have so much wealth when billions of others have so little," Melinda wrote, in the couple's most recent annual letter.

The couple married in 1994 in what was then Manele Bay Hotel in Hawaii. They tied the knot by the "par-3 12th hole" on the property's golf course, according to Forbes. The event reportedly cost $1 million.

To keep the wedding private, Bill booked all the rooms in the hotel, along with all of the helicopters on the island of Maui to "prevent unwanted visitors from flying over," Forbes reported.

Bill's parents gifted the newlyweds with a sculpture of two birds, sitting side-by-side and staring at the horizon. "It's still in front of our house," Melinda wrote in the couples' 2018 annual letter. "I think of it all the time, because fundamentally we’re looking in the same direction."

The next year, the couple's lavish home — nicknamed "Xanadu 2.0" — was completed in Medina, Washington. The mansion's estimated worth was $124 million in 2016.

The couple has raised two daughters and a son — and didn't let any of them own a cellphone until they were 14, according to The Mirror.

Bill told Rolling Stone the children were raised Catholic. "We've raised our kids in a religious way," he said. "They've gone to the Catholic church that Melinda goes to and I participate in."

Bill and Melinda would read books from a range of genres to their kids as they grew up, from "Guess How Much I Love You" to "Fahrenheit 451."

Gates has said his wife is a driving force when it comes to bringing the family together. "Melinda is very creative about helping me find chances to spend time with the kids," Gates wrote in a 2017 Reddit AMA. "Even just driving them to school is a great time to talk to them."

Each of the Gates' kids will inherit about $10 million of their parents' $89.6 billion fortune, while much of the rest will go to charitable causes.

"We want to strike a balance where they have the freedom to do anything but not a lot of money showered on them so they could go out and do nothing," Bill told TED.

The Gates also support their kids in other ways. The couple spent $37 million purchasing a string of Wellington, Florida properties in 2016. The reason? Their daughter Jennifer is a nationally ranked show jumper, and the Florida town is the equestrian capital of the US.

Melinda has said her relationship with her husband has changed over time. "We've had to change to really be coequals," she said. "It's not something that immediately happens overnight, but we're both committed to it."

According to Melinda, Bill was used to being in charge from his Microsoft days when they first started the foundation.

But these days, Bill and Melinda work as partners at the foundation. They both received Presidential Medals of Freedom in 2016 from President Barack Obama for their efforts.

They work to make sure their schedules are synchronized, complimentary, and balanced. "Melinda and I look over our schedules a lot to make sure we are balancing things well," Gates wrote in a 2018 Reddit AMA.

In response to a question about how the couple handles arguments, Melinda jokingly wrote "we never disagree" in the Gates' 2018 annual letter.

"Our occasional disagreements these days are over tactics. Because I've been a public figure longer, and because I’m a man, some people assume I am making the big decisions. That's never been the case," Bill wrote in the Gates Foundation's annual letter for 2018.

Melinda added that the couple avoids serious disagreements by sharing fundamental values, trust, and a sense of open-mindedness.

Warren Buffett, who is close with the couple, told Fortune that Bill was "smart as hell, obviously," but that "in terms of seeing the whole picture," Melinda was smarter.

In a Reddit AMA, Gates disclosed that his wife and Buffett were his two favorite celebrities...

... followed by Bono and Jimmy Carter. He added that Nelson Mandela was the most impressive political leader he's ever met.

When it comes to their working partnership, Bill wrote that the perception that Melinda is "the heart" of the organization is a bit of a stereotype, in the 2018 annual letter.

"Just as she knows I'm more emotional than people realize, I know she's more analytical than people realize. When I get really enthusiastic about something, I count on her to make sure I'm being realistic."

"Melinda and I believe that everyone deserves the chance for a healthy and productive life — and so with the help of our amazing partners, we are working to find innovative ways to help people in need all over the world," Bill wrote during one of his Reddit AMAs.

(Source: BI)

Bill Gates’ daughter and her Arab boyfriend visit Kuwait

Jennifer Gates, daughter of American billionaire and Microsoft founder Bill Gates, and her Egyptian boyfriend, Nayel Nassar, are still going strong.

The duo, who have been dating for a while now, are often spotted visiting countries around the world and they recently spent a holiday together in Kuwait.

Chicago-born Nassar, an accomplished equestrian and Stanford graduate, was raised in the Gulf state and is said to often make trips back to the country. This time his girlfriend came along.

The couple arrived in Kuwait during the past holiday season and enjoyed a quick stay in the country.

Even though Gates posted photos of the trip on her private Instagram page, the images were leaked earlier this week and have now gone completely viral.

Nassar also posted similar photos on his public Instagram account in Decemeber 2017.

The photo is now going viral

In her caption of the now-leaked photo which was originally posted to Gates' Instagram page, she wrote:

"A magical three days in Kuwait with my favorite person. Happy holidays everyone."

It was also uploaded on Nassar's Instagram

People love it

بنت بيل غيتس اغنى رجل بالعالم حاليًا في الكويت مع زوجها المصري

تعليقي : ياحلو البساطة من غير بهرجة👍 pic.twitter.com/XkBwBzGxg6

— Abdullatif Ramadhan (@AbdullatifQ8y) January 20, 2018

"My comment on this: Simplicity without flashiness is the most beautiful thing."

The couple recently celebrated their first anniversary

Gates and Nassar celebrated their one year of dating last week. To mark the occasion Nassar posted a photo of the couple on Instagram, captioning it:

"Happy first year my love! Here's to many more."

(Source: Step Feed)