Plane loads of people dieing here every 24 hours. We need to actually double down on the Public Health measures. Almost 200,000 new cases on some days. Many tens of thousands in the hospital. Now thanksgiving gatherings threaten to add serious fuel to this raging wildfire. Ill talk to gates about the latest on the disease and the vaccines. Also, iran, iraq, china, israel, yemen, afghanistan. A top official says the intent is to set so many Foreign Policy fires the Biden Administration wont be able to put them out. How will america recover on the world stage . I will ask former u. S. Ambassador to the u. N. Samantha power and Richard Haass on the council on foreign relations. But first, heres my take. The first time i met barack obama, he struck me as different from any other politician i had met. He was smart, well read, and energetic, but that isnt what made him stand out. It was the way he asked questions. Most politicians ask a question to answer it themselves. After giving you a brief opportunity to respond, they jump in. Well, heres what i think. And proceed to deliver some packaged piece of wisdom that has been recited dozens of times. But obama would ask a question to which he actually wanted an answer. He would listen and ask another question. He genuinely wanted to understand how someone else might view an issue. That unusual politician comes through clearly in his new book, a promised land. It is well written, certainly the best written president ial memoir i have read. Obama has an easy and stylish way with words describing walking through the white house. It was where each morning i felt the first slap of winter wind or pulse of summer heat. Describing the helicopter ride, he writes, i gazed out at the rolling maryland landscape and the tidy neighborhoods below, and then the potomac glistening beneath the fading sun. The most notable feature of the book, however, is obamas ability to see not just both sides of every issue but even to empathize with the side in vigorous opposition to his own. He writes that he could understand Hillary Clintons frustration after a long climb to power to be confronting an upstart challenger for the democratic nomination. He understands the motivations of Republican Leaders like john boehner and Mitch Mcconnell that provides a short history lesson, American Voters rarely reward the opposition for cooperating with the governing party. He even as a grudging respect for the way the tea party gained passionate support and widespread news coverage. This quality of fair mindedness is admirable in anyone, especially one who has risen to the top of a cutthroat profession like politics. And it did give obama considerable advantages in both domestic and Foreign Policy. He could see the world with different peoples eyes. But his memoir does have one gap. He devotes little time in the book to the central political dynamic in his years in office, the rise of an enraged utterly obstructionist opposition to his presidency that ultimately culminated in the election of donald trump. A reminder, barack obama was a moderate democrat, conservative in temperament he acknowledges and governed as one for his key economic advisers he chose tim geithner and larry summers, widely seen as two of the most marketfriendly experts of the party. He offered republican senator judd gregg another key cabin post, secretary of commerce. He sent in thousands more troops to afghanistan and expanded drone warfare, and his Health Care Plan was modelled on the conservative heritage foundations old proposal, one that also served as the basis for mitt romneys program when he was governor of massachusetts. This reign of moderation and compromise, however, elicited a reaction from the Republican Party that was furious and vengeful. Obama notes that gregg who initially accepted the job as commerce secretary, had to back down in the face of activist outrage that he was serving the enemy. Obama recounts the chase of Charlie Chris who supported the stimulus since the economy was in freefall. His twosecond hand shake and hug with obama made chris so toxic within the Republican Party that by 2010 he had to become an independent and later a democrat. Despite many compromises, obama got not one republican vote for his stimulus or Health Care Bills in the house of representatives. In opposition to his policy was often couched in blatantly racist ways such as posters denouncing obamacare with caricatures of him as an african witch doctor with a bone stuck through his nose. The man who succeeded him in the office, donald trump, rose to political prominence by casting doubt on whether obama was born in the United States. Obama talks about these hysterical reactions to him intelligently but briefly never offering deep analysis or passionate anger. He admits he wasnt focused on the ominous undercurrents that were growing in strength. He writes, my team and i were too busy. But it might also be that it would take him into deep and dark waters that are so different from the hopeful optimistic country he so plainly wants to believe in. America, for him, remains a promise land. Go to cnn. Com fareed for a link to my Washington Post column this week. And lets get started. Lets get right to it with bill gates. He was of course the cofounder of microsoft. He is now the cochair of the bill and Melinda Gates foundation. The foundation has been deeply focused on finding a vaccine for covid19, among many other health issues. Bill, welcome back to the show. Thank you. So, first, give us a sense, where are we . We see these numbers. They seem to be rising obviously. There is an exponential growth issue. But, on the other hand, the death rate has come down. Hospitalization is rising but sort of manageable. I am trying to get from you how worried should we be about the next two months . We should be very worried about the next six months. The case numbers are going up a lot. And while the age profile of those cases is somewhat younger, which cuts the death rate and the ability to treat, we are going to have just so many cases that the death rate will get up over 2,000 for a lot of this winter period. Do you think that means that we are going to inevitably have to move towards some kind of a second series of real lockdowns . Well, lockdowns are only as good as the adherence to those lockdowns are. And maskwearing mandates are only as good as people following those. And unfortunately i dont know given the fatigue and the politicization and the confused messages the white house was saying weve never been in such great shape. What . What is that referring to . Its not clear. Ideally, people would say, okay, because the medical tools are coming, we can double down on good behavior, try not to have your family be the last death in this pandemic because youre willing to see it through until the spring, which is when the vaccine will really start to cut the numbers down, and of course the change in weather will be helping us as well. What do you make of the fact that europes numbers have also gone up so badly . Because in some cases they were handling it better than the United States was. They seemed to manage the first wave better. And now, in many cases, theyre doing worse than the United States is on a per capita basis. What conclusion did you draw from that . Well, the entire northern hemisphere, wherever you have a lot of cases, is seeing a big winter rebound. And that was expected by a lot of people. The resurgence started in europe first. Theyve also put in more effective measures if you look at their mobility numbers, theyve reduced mobility. And so theyre starting to see a peak. Whereas in the u. S. , compliance on mobility is fairly low. And so were still climbing up, and that climb is expected to continue literally through february. And thats where you get likely over 2,000 deaths per day during this winter period. Youve been advocating people being more cognisant of these social distancing rules. For example, the issue now is about thanksgiving. So, i mean, you know there are a lot of people who worry there are elites out there who tell everybody what to do but then dont follow the rules themselves. So then let me ask you, whats your thanksgiving dinner going to look like . Well have less Family Members there than we normally would have. Everybodys always reminding each other about masks. The numbers show that we could save over 50,000 lives in the u. S. Just by getting our mask compliance up. Its not a time when people will be able to enjoy the thanksgiving quite the way that theyd like to. Ill have a video connection with a lot of the Family Members on thanksgiving day but not be with them to have turkey together. So, to me, what is still central about how america has handled this has been why our testing has been so bad. I mean, i understand that with the crazy, quote, batchwork of central, state, and local government that maybe having people all observe social distancing and restrict travel would be hard. But i sort of assumed that we would flood the zone with money so that there would be incredibly widespread testing of all kinds, rapid, you know, pcr, everything. And we still are in a situation where testing is just not that great. What explains this . Well, we should be able to raise the capacity, which is about 1. 5 million a day. That means in a week you can test about 2. 5 of the population. If youre getting the results back within 24 hours and youre testing the right people, that is people who are symptomatic or people who are contacts of those people and making sure its not just wealthy people able to access repeated testing. Then you can start to cut off some infection chains. But the Contact Tracing effort was not managed at the federal level. Most states have a hard time getting the interviews going, getting the databases working there. So Contract Tracing is largely a failure. And now were getting up to a level of numbers where even if it was well managed, it would be very, very difficult. There are new test capacities coming along in almost every category. Some of them you have to be careful like the strip test, which is good. But it doesnt catch the early cases like the pcr test. And so people are going to be a little confused about when do you switch tests. We do think in the First Quarter we can more than double the number of tests out there. And then well have a new administration that will make sure youre getting the results back very quickly. Theyll avoid reimbursing for these outofdate results and figure out how to layer in the new test types. Testing will be helping us more once you have a federal set of policies. Stay with us. Next on gps, from the problems to the solutions. Bill gates on the vaccines that have been highly publicized and some of the medicines that have not. Made for . Its made for this guy a veteran who honorably served and its made for her shes serving now we made it for all branches and all ranks whether they served one tour or made a career of it. We also made usaa for military spouses and their kids usaa is easy to work with and can save you money on auto, home and renters insurance. Become a member today. Get an insurance quote at usaa. Com quote usaa. What youre made of were made for att plan an insurance quote at usaa. Com quote for each Family Member with the features they want, like hbo max. 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Do you think this is a predictor of the other vaccines . Are we going to be surprised on the upside with all this stuff . Yes. Almost all the vaccines will work and with very high efficacy levels. The Pfizer Vaccine was in the middle of the pack in terms of the antibodies solicited. Astrazeneca that we hope that the uk will approve before the end of the year was only a little bit less than that. Novavax, Johnson Johnson even better immunity from those. So, weve got now some of the factories in india actually making the astrazeneca vaccine at risk. We funded that transfer. And those factories are very high volume. And those vaccines are very cheap, very scalable. And so the next few approvals astrazeneca, novavax, and Johnson Johnson will be very critical to get to very, very big numbers. But im optimistic that by february its very likely they will all prove very efficacious and safe. And how worried are you about the execution, the delivery part of this . The first ones require that they be kept at cold temperatures and theyre double dose, the others are not. But looking at it all in totality, is distribution of the vaccines going to be a huge problem, or do you think it can be managed . Yeah. So once you get the supply ramped up enough, then you have both the logistics and the willingness to take the vaccine. And im hopeful even though the logistic piece is a bit confused in the u. S. Right now. There should be a website already indicating near status and the criteria of ranking people, you get told what your priority code is based on your profession, age. People should be seeing that. You want to make sure that you dont waste any of this vaccine. But in a slightly imperfect way, i do think the logistics will get solved. I think that there will be enough people who jump in early on that people see even more evidence of the safety and that over time we will get to that 70 plus level that we need in order to stop the spread of the disease. You know a lot of the people who are advising joe biden. Do you think that the approach hes taking, do you think the people hes appointed are likely to be able to bring about a change in the federal policies and that they will substantially improve as a result . Well, it wouldve been nice to have those people the ones presenting to the public and the public not feel like the pandemic was being minimized, you know, with the desire to share good news. These are good people. I was really pleased to see the list of people. Its great the president elect is making this such a priority. Hell be able to take the tools that, a combination of the private sector work have created now. He will be able to participate in the global effort to get rid of this disease so its not constantly coming back into the country. Hell rejoin the w. H. O. So theres a lot of things that they will be able to do better. Whether they can get people Wearing Masks now that thats almost been politicized, i dont know, but that will be a nice milestone to have, you know, more than tony fauci will be to communicate in a clear way and be honest about the bad news in key positions. Before we get to president bidens term, we of course still have a ways to go, and i got to ask you this, bill, i know you dont like to talk about politics. But a lot of people listen to you. And as a citizen are you worried about what is going on right now with a situation where the president seems determined not to concede the election . You know, i was always told people didnt like sore losers, and theres a lot at stake in terms of how well our democracy allows peaceful transition. So im hopeful that very quickly the transition efforts are put fully activated. Im not following the minutia. But its disappointing that uncertaintys being created where there should be none. But youre optimistic that this will be resolved . In other words, how worried are you about where we are now . You know, the idea, is there longterm damage to have people who trust you be told that our electoral system is flawed . You know, i know theres a lot of concern about that. But i think well have a smooth transition to the president elect biden. You have some experience with conspiracy theories. Do you worry that this Conspiracy Theory will, you know, that this has now been set in motion, the conspiracy of a fraudulent election . Well, i think the u. S. Should be proud of the example that typically we sat and tell other countries to have free and Fair Elections and that the loser needs to concede and not try and change the rules or get around the rules. So the u. S. Is a shining light to other countries. Sometimes we dont live up to that, but most of the time we do. On that note, bill gates, always a pleasure and an honor. Thank you. Next on gps, a trump official admitted to cnn that the white house had mandered a sort of scorched Earth Campaign making such a Foreign Policy mess around the world that the biden team would be hard pressed to clean it up. I will talk to. With an adjustae Precision Jet spray and an advanced pad system. And offers personalized cleaning suggestions unique to your home. Braava jet m6 and the irobot home app. Only from irobot. Relief from your worst cold and flu symptoms. Le braava jet m6 and the irobot home app. So when you need to show your cold whos boss, grab mucinex allinone. And get back to your rhythm. Feel the power. Beat the symptoms fast. Extension mascara creates wershowstopping lashes and our liquid lash that wont clump, flake or smudge. 100 vegan, crueltyfree and powered by our highperforman