Millions of people could die in 6 months, according to Microsoft's founder.

As time goes by, humanity advances in science and other fields, with those advances and new learnings, we're able to overcome our challenges, wars, diseases and natural disasters.

However, Bill Gates, former CEO of Microsoft, stated that we are about to have a new epidemy in the coming decade, and we aren't prepared to this obstacle, and there's enough evidence about his statement in the 2018 R&D Blueprint (a document with strategies to increase the efficiency in emergency situations like those, by speeding up the research and development).

According to Mr. Gates, governments lack in preparation for pandemics, and if they treated this with the same seriousness level as war threats we would have better chances. Just for comparison, if we told a government that someone has a weapon which is easily able to kill 30 million people, they would start researching and trying to figure out how it works and how they can defend their country and hold their superiority among this threat, however, when the "weapon" is an unknown disease, they don't pay the same attention, which can have serious consequences. 

Bill Gates Says A New Flu Could Kill 30 Million People In 6 Months

If we look at human history, Polio and the Spanish Flu are examples of what those serious diseases are capable of doing with our species, the last one killed a total of 50 million people in the past century, just for comparison effects, "Disease X" will probably kill more than half of this amount in just 6 months, and even without the deaths, the collateral effects of this unknown disease could be even worse than polio, which paralyzed its carriers.

However, there is no need to instant and absurd panic and think that society, as we know, is doomed and coming to an end, if governments invest better at research and disease prevention, we could prepare for those threats and overcome these obstacles as we did in the last thousands of years.