On this episode of Yahoo Finance Presents, Melinda Gates, Co-Chair of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, sat down with Yahoo Finance's Brian Sozzi to discuss the Foundation's announcement to contribute $250 million into COVID-19 vaccination efforts. She also discusses the logistics of distributing the vaccine, the timeline for widespread vaccination, minsinformation about the vaccine, working with President-elect Biden's team about the pandemic plan and caregiving for 2021, as well as the Foundation's plans for the future.

Video Transcript

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BRIAN SOZZI: Joining me now is Melinda Gates, co-chair of the Gates Foundation. Melinda, good to see you again. Thank you for taking the time today.

MELINDA GATES: Thanks for having me, Brian.

BRIAN SOZZI: So the foundation is pledging $250 million in the fight against COVID-19. That is the largest single contribution to the response to date. How will the money be allocated?

MELINDA GATES: We're looking at making sure-- our whole goal is to make sure that these vaccines get out to low and middle income countries. So part of this money is going to be used on procuring 200 million doses of vaccine for low and middle income countries and procuring 120 million rapid diagnostic tests for low and middle income countries.

BRIAN SOZZI: How concerned are you about vaccine nationalism? Because when I see a pledge like this, really, it's forward thinking. It's needed, but, you know, you hear so much talk that the vaccines will be concentrated in the US, the UK. Europe will get their fair share. But to your point, really, it's those small countries that will be hurt.

MELINDA GATES: I'm deeply concerned whenever I hear about vaccine nationalism. I think we have a moral responsibility to make sure everybody gets a vaccine. There's an estimate that says that if only high income countries get vaccine first, we're going to see twice as much death around the world. And we're going to have a much, much slower recovery of all of our economies, not just the middle and low income, but even the high income countries.

BRIAN SOZZI: What are some of the barriers to getting the vaccine into the arms of folks in those lower income countries? It's not necessarily just getting the vaccine to the country. How do you get it into the arm? I mean, we don't even know-- we have logistical challenges here in the US-- cold chain storage. How could it be done successfully?

MELINDA GATES: Well, you have to do a lot of good planning up front. And that needs to be happening now. But it is possible. We have a global mechanism that was set up about 20 years ago. We were actually-- we are a part of this-- part of setting it up. It's called the Alliance for Vaccines and Immunization. What we can do is procure vaccines, and through Gavi, there is a whole distribution system that exists out in low income countries that it comes to the hub, let's say, in Kenya, in Nairobi, and then goes out to all of the country. It's totally possible. You just have to do the planning now.

BRIAN SOZZI: How difficult will it be to get the vaccine distributed successfully, even here in the US? There is a lot of optimism, and it's good to hear. You know, we need this vaccine. We need it out. But this thought that you could just have the military distribute the vaccine and states will do their thing, there just doesn't seem to be any coordination.

MELINDA GATES: Well, if you empower the CDC in the right way, the CDC is completely set up to help make sure that the right things are done in state after state and local region after local region. So again, it just takes very good planning to figure out which states get it and then up for states to decide, OK, what part of our healthcare workforce gets it at the same time as the elderly, and then who gets it after that. But it's completely doable in a country like the United States. I'm not saying it's easy, but it's absolutely doable.

BRIAN SOZZI: Based on your conversations with leaders across the world, is it too optimistic to expect half of the US population to be vaccinated for COVID by the middle of next year?

MELINDA GATES: I think by middle of next year, you could see half the US vaccinated. Because we have these two first arm mRNA vaccines coming, but then there are three more that are going to come very quickly behind that. Those are even easier to manufacture. And so, I think you'll start to see lots and lots of doses available.

BRIAN SOZZI: Your husband, Bill Gates, mentioned in a recent interview that things will be back to normal or start to get back to normal by the middle of next year, as the population gets vaccinated. What do you think normal looks like? What is the new normal for corporations or, more broadly, just for humans?

MELINDA GATES: I don't think we know what the new normal looks like. I think it's going to be different than the old normal. But how we do this, if you're lucky enough to have a job that you can do by screen and do from a different office or from home, I think we're going to go to hybrid models of that compared to what we've had in the past.

I think education and schooling, I think we're going to put lots of kids are going to return to school, which would be fantastic. That's much needed. But I also think, hopefully, we'll start to learn some things from the digital models that were used by middle and high income kids of how to do some hybrid learning to help catch up kids who didn't have access to the digital tools. So I think there's going to be a lot of things that shift. And I think it's going to be a little bit hard to predict right now.

BRIAN SOZZI: How do you expect to allocate more funds moving forward? As the vaccine rolls out, what's some of your thinking on how the foundation can help?

MELINDA GATES: Well, the foundation, with this new announcement that we've made today, is now committed to-- we've committed over $1.75 billion to COVID tools. And that is to really make sure the vaccine-- we've done this incredibly difficult work as a scientific community. It's unbelievable. I mean, if you think about sitting here last March 30th, we would not have all thought we'd have vaccine here in December being given out, approved and then started to roll out.

So that initial piece of hard work is done. There's still a lot more science to come. But now, we're really focused as a foundation on how do you get out to everybody, and how do you get it distributed and keep everybody safe with the right tests, contact tracing, mask wearing, and the new vaccine as its tool.

BRIAN SOZZI: Is the FDA still the gold standard? The FDA has come under a lot of fire. But should people still trust that the FDA will approve a vaccine that they can put successfully in their arm and not get sick?

MELINDA GATES: Yes, the FDA is the gold standard in the United States. There are very good people who work on those regulations. And they are not going to let a vaccine come out until they know that it's safe and efficacious. Because we rely on that to know that what we're putting in our bodies is safe. And so, absolutely. Once they approve a vaccine, as soon as it's my turn to take it when it comes to my age group and my risk profile, I'm getting it the day I can. But that will be after healthcare workers and the elderly.

BRIAN SOZZI: Is it the other-- there is a problem here, too-- vaccine misinformation. You can get-- really go down a rabbit hole on social media with some of this information. How do you think that will hurt or hinder the uptake on the vaccination?

MELINDA GATES: Well, we already know, there's a tremendous amount of vaccine hesitancy because of the disinformation. And the disinformation is incredibly unfortunate because it actually results in people's deaths. If you don't do the right thing, you get COVID and you could die. So I think, you know, people do go down, as you say, a rabbit hole on some other piece of disinformation. And then, unfortunately, social media then serves up more disinformation.

But one thing that I do think will happen is, as the vaccine rolls out and we see healthcare workers safe, we see teachers returning to school, we see the elderly are safe, I think people start to ask their doctor, is this right for me? And then, they'll decide to take it. So I think we will turn the tide on this, but I think it's going to take some time. But I think, you know, you'll start to see the tide turning, I think, by next summer.

BRIAN SOZZI: Do you think big tech has a role in helping to get rid of this misinformation? Melinda, I just-- I don't see them stepping up here, or thus far.

MELINDA GATES: Well, I think you're seeing some of them do the right things to keep disinformation off their platform and to stop it or take it down. But I think absolutely more could be done. I think, you know, social media has risen very, very quickly in society. And even the way it's used is changing, honestly, it feels like, in my teenager day by day and that age cohort.

But I think the regulations have not only not kept up. They haven't gotten ahead of it. And I think it's time that they do. You know, we have good regulations for TV broadcasting. There were many, many years ago. We have good regulations in the motion picture industry. It's time to have some good regulation on these social media platforms.

BRIAN SOZZI: Have you talked to President-elect Biden and his administration yet on how the foundation would be helpful?

MELINDA GATES: Bill and I have spoken with President-elect Biden. And the topics not-- it wouldn't be surprising to you are the pandemic, because that is first and foremost are the things that needs to be done. We've spoken with him also about climate change because he plans to reenter the climate change leadership on the global stage. And also about caregiving in this economy, that if we are going to get back to work, we've got to fix the broken caregiving economy for children and for the elderly.

BRIAN SOZZI: Well, you gave me three things there, so I just wrote that down. I take notes quick in my increasingly older age. What do you think we will see from the Bush administration within those first 100 days, as it pertains to the pandemic?

MELINDA GATES: Well, we've already seen him announce an imminently reasonable group of wise people on his COVID task force. And so, I think you're going to see him reenter the global stage. He knows the importance of diplomacy from his many, many, many years as a senator and as a vice president.

And I think you'll see him reenter all kinds of global mechanisms, like the World Health Organization, like the Paris Climate treaty. I think you'll see global leadership from him with many of the other nations that have come together to make sure that tools, COVID tools, are accessible by low and middle income countries. He knows that for a robust return and recovery in the United States, you've got to get the rest of the world vaccine as well.

BRIAN SOZZI: Do you think that-- we have not had that under the Trump administration. How much do you think that has set us back in this fight, the fact that, really, there has not been any globally coordinated response?

MELINDA GATES: I think we wouldn't have so much death in the United States, starting there, if we'd had an appropriate response from leadership. And yes, I think, you know, the US is missing on a lot of these global stages related to the COVID-19 tools. And that's been unfortunate. It's going to take some time to rebuild that. But believe me, people want the US there.

Again, we want to get the global economy up and working. Like, the Eurasia Group forecast that for the United States, we can add $200 billion to our own economy in the next five years if we get other countries vaccinated. Because then you can get travel fully back up and running. You can get manufacturing and supply chains fully up and running. So it not only makes moral sense, it makes huge economic sense for the United States.

BRIAN SOZZI: You mentioned caregiving. And this is a topic that I'm sure is near and dear to you. You've written extensively about it. What would you like to see the Biden administration do as it pertains to caregiving?

MELINDA GATES: I would like to see them put in a leader very high up in the administration to coordinate across agencies. Because care means caring for the elderly and children. We have 800,000 people on the Medicaid rolls, elders who can't get elder care. So I want them to fix that. I'd like them to put $50 billion into the childcare industry that's teetering on the brink right now of failing.

And if they do that and long term, put in paid family medical leave, we can get women back to work. I believe we want women to work at this economy. They're 88% of our healthcare workers. They're the vast majority of our teachers, of our front line workers in grocery stores. But, you know, 865,000 women stepped back their careers in September, one in four saying they're thinking of downshifting. We won't get women working again. We won't get the economy up and running again, unless we deal with this childcare and elder care.

BRIAN SOZZI: So it sounds as though, really, I mean, this is a major impediment to an economic recovery, right?

MELINDA GATES: Yes, we will have a slower economic recovery if we don't deal with this care crisis we have.

BRIAN SOZZI: And a caregiving czar, right? Is that what you are-- would that be fair to call that?

MELINDA GATES: Yes, definitely. Because that person at a high level can coordinate across the governmental agencies to get done what needs to be done.

BRIAN SOZZI: Before I let you go, I just have two more for you. So if we were to be sitting here a year from now, where do you think the globe is in the fight against COVID?

MELINDA GATES: I think you'll see a year from now quite a few of the high income countries returning to whatever the new normal is and starting to make a slow recovery, a slow recovery, though, people back out living their lives and in the workforce. But I think it's going to be yet another year beyond that, the end of 2022, that you'll start to see low and middle income countries starting to have full workforce back in production and their economies returning.

BRIAN SOZZI: Your close friend, Warren Buffett, the chairman and CEO of Berkshire Hathaway, for decades has warned about pandemics. As you take a step back here and perhaps reflect on where we've been in the past year, do you think the government and the globe is, in any way, prepared for the next pandemic?

MELINDA GATES: No, we have a lot of work to do. There is something called the Center for Epidemic Preparedness that our foundation is part of setting up. But it needs a lot more financing. It needs a lot more structure to think about how do we prepare, and quite frankly, it needs to practice what happens, not if, but when the next infectious disease comes. And if that preparedness is pulled together and coordinated, you're going to have other infectious disease outbreaks, but we'll be able to tamp them down sooner before they travel around the globe.

BRIAN SOZZI: Just basically what we've seen so far from the pandemic, has that changed how you plan for the future as it pertains to the Gates Foundation?

MELINDA GATES: Well, we haven't done our postmortem yet. And I don't think we will until we're fully out of this crisis. But, you know, a lot of our work has been set back. You know, for the first time in 30 years, people living on extreme poverty has actually gone up. 37 million more families are in extreme poverty.

So we will step back when COVID-19 is over and say to ourselves, OK, where do we need to rebuild, for instance, our parts of our malaria program, or how do we push forward the vaccine work? So we're continuing to do all of that work during COVID-19, but it's all gotten harder. But I don't think we'll reassess our priorities. Our priorities will always be helping people live, no matter where they are, a healthy and productive life.

BRIAN SOZZI: I said this to you back in April 2019 when we talked last, and I'll say it to you again, I think what you're doing at the foundation is absolutely tremendous. We will leave it there. Melinda Gates, co-chair of the Gates Foundation, always good to speak with you. Stay safe, and we'll talk to you soon.