Gates acknowledged that he’s usually the optimist in the room, reminding people that we’re lifting children out of poverty around the globe and getting better at eliminating diseases like polio and malaria. But “there’s one area though where the world isn’t making much progress,” Gates said, “and that’s pandemic preparedness.” The likelihood that such a disease will appear continues to rise. New pathogens emerge all the time as the world population increases and humanity encroaches on wild environments. It’s becoming easier and easier for individual people or small groups to create weaponized diseases that could spread like wildfire around the globe.