Bill Gates has a way of coming out of the shadows during difficult and confusing times, and reminding everyone just how ahead of the game and inspiring he always is. His foundation, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, has recently announced its plan to build new medical centers and factories for promising COVID-19 vaccine development.

There are 7 vaccines that are being developed at the moment, but it is likely that only 1 or 2 of them will be produced in the end.

Gates announced this plan during an interview he conducted at-home with Trevor Noah from The Daily Show.

Bill Gates Thinking Proactively

Gates mentions that his foundation has a large amount of expertise when it comes to infectious diseases that he decided to fund things, like the efforts to develop a vaccine, in order to be more prepared for what is to come. He also mentions that his money can help to speed things up.

While building the factories to develop the 7 vaccines can result in a waste of billions of dollars in terms of construction costs, having facilities and medical centers that are ready for treatments will pay off in the end by saving thousands of lives.

Bill Gates doesn’t want to waste time when figuring out which vaccine works and in turn, building the factory.

History in Health

An op-ed was published in the Washington Post last week where Bill Gates states that if we do everything right, a safe and effective vaccine can be developed in order to bring the disease to an end. According to him, this can be done in less than 18 months which would be the fastest a vaccine has ever been developed.

Bill Gates believes that if the right decisions are made now using information backed by science, data, and experienced medical professionals, they can save lives and help the country get back to work.

The Gates Foundation has been involved in other initiatives to combat the novel coronavirus. The foundation pledged $100 million to identify, assess, develop, and scale-up the treatments for the virus.

In the past, IKEA has claimed that it would strive to become a carbon-neutral company that protects the environment, and now it seems it is proving its claims. The furniture and home furnishing shop has recently purchased 11,000 acres of forest in Georgia, which was land that was about to be lost to development.

IKEA Is Implementing Various Strategies to Reduce the Carbon Imprint of Its Business

IKEA bought the forest land in Georgia to ensure it remained intact and kept working on sucking up CO2 from the atmosphere. Apparently, the forest was bought as part of the company’s ongoing strategy to reduce the carbon imprint it creates through its chain. In addition to saving the trees, the purchase will save the valuable gopher tortoise that lives in the Altamaha Basin. The forest is now owned by an IKEA subsidiary known as Ingka Group. In the past, it has done work with The Conservation Fund, which is a non-profit organization that has protected millions of acres of US forests from fragmentation and development.

IKEA’s Ingka Group Is Setting the Highest International Standard for Forest Management

Both the Conservation Fund and Ingka are making sure to keep working forests in Georgia from being broken up into segments and developed. The organizations also make sure to take legal action to protect the forests, and this also protects the gopher tortoise, which is a priority species for conservation. Ingka Group owns some 616,000 acres of forests in both the US and Europe, and the company chooses to ensure it sets the highest international standards for proper forest management. According to an IKEA spokesperson, the company uses no significant amount of the wood from the forests it manages.

It seems that forest stewardship is just one of the many tactics IKEA uses to become a carbon-neutral company. They also announced that they would start buying used IKEA furniture from its clients and use it for resale. The company also uses less carbon-emitting materials and electric vans whenever it can.