A year after splitting from his wife, Bill Gates tells Alice Thomson about being single again and using his fortune to combat the next pandemic.
He had come a long way to this blue lawn, and his dream must have seemed so close that he could hardly fail to grasp it," is the quote from The Great Gatsby Bill Gates chose to have inscribed on the dome of his library in Seattle. Gates picked it, he once told me, because Gatsby's wooing of his beloved Daisy reminded Bill and Melinda of their courtship.
Didn't he nearly have it all. A billionaire by the time he was 31, the brilliant nerdy coder always seemed to get everything right. His company, Microsoft, led the tech boom but being the richest man alive wasn't enough. Paintings, yachts and jets soon bored him; he wanted to rescue the world too. In the next three decades he gave away more than US$50 billion ($76 billion) to help eradicate polio, eliminate malaria and save millions of lives. He also developed a reputation as a prophet, having been one of the first to warn the world about climate change and a global pandemic.
But it was his marriage to Melinda that set him apart from the other Silicon Valley giants, Bezos, Zuckerberg and Musk. Bill and Melinda, now 66 and 57, seemed like the perfect pair. The first time I met Melinda French Gates, in Seattle five years ago, we talked about Bill and sex. "Of course, I absolutely use contraceptives," she told me, stressing the transformative effects of birth control on developing countries. "Every year more than a billion couples have sex and, yes, not surprisingly, we do too." The couple appeared to adore each other. They had matching glass offices with identical desks. Every day they would drive home discussing vaginal gels and sewerage systems and how to save the world. She wasn't just some trophy wife. They had three children, Jennifer, 26, Rory, 22, and Phoebe, 19, and set up the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, becoming the world's greatest philanthropists.
The economics and computer science graduate and former Microsoft employee would tease her husband when he sounded too pompous and kept him grounded and normal. "He does the chores, takes the kids to school and walks the dogs," she told me. This is a man who admits that as a cofounder and chief executive of Microsoft, "I learnt all my employees' numberplates off by heart so I could check what time they were leaving every night." When after seven years they couldn't decide whether to marry, he drew up the pros and cons on a whiteboard.
Where he is more facts and stats, she is more heart and emotion. "But inside was this very tender, warm-hearted, curious person," Melinda said. To relax, they would meditate. "Not cross-legged or anything but on chairs next to each other," Bill once explained to me. They also set up a book club together.
He appeared lucky in life "and love too", he said. Their marriage lasted 27 years. Then a year ago, out of the blue, Melinda and Bill announced they were separating. Suddenly everything seemed to unravel. Gates was accused of having spent time with the financier and sex offender Jeffrey Epstein before he died, a man Melinda called "evil personified", and there were rumours that he may not have been faithful. Overnight he seemed to slip from sainthood to sinner.
How could he have been so careless? I've interviewed Gates five times over the past few years, in London, Ethiopia and Seattle. He's a hard man not to like as he enthusiastically bombards you with figures and graphs. He never appears arrogant despite being fêted by prime ministers and presidents. He is punctilious and courteous, his staff adore him, his mind is constantly whirling as he doodles away on a notepad, though he does expect everyone to keep up.
Now I would be interviewing him in New York. I wondered whether I would be meeting a different man. Would he be contrite or cautious? We were meant to be discussing his latest book, How to Prevent the Next Pandemic. He still loves gadgets. Before our appointment he sends me an elaborate Covid test with batteries and vials. When we meet at his hotel, where he is promoting his book, he appears the same, wearing his favourite V-neck jumper, chinos and loafers and carrying a white tote bag filled with reading material.
"You've had quite a couple of years," I suggest. "Not only has your marriage unravelled, but your father died and while trying to rescue the world from a pandemic you have been attacked by antivaxers."
He pauses. "It's been pretty dramatic," he admits. "But the weirdest part has been the kids leaving. The youngest just went off to college. She always had ten friends over. As I come out of the pandemic and we are back to 'normal', it's actually pretty different." His youngest, he adds, has just been to see him in New York, "so I did get to do some differential equations on infection models with her. I enjoyed that quite a bit."
But their vast house in Seattle suddenly seems very empty. "My wife's graduated as well so I'm going to have lots of interesting dinners at the house. I figure a few times a week I will have various experts come. I have this nice house that lends itself to great discussions. But it feels too big most of the time. I am only a small-sized person."
Xanadu 2.0, the Gates home in Seattle, covers 66,000sq ft and has 18 bathrooms, a beach filled with sand from the Caribbean and one of Leonardo da Vinci's scientific notebooks. The Gateses spent much of the pandemic there with their children. Phoebe even convinced him to post a TikTok video with them both dancing to Harry Styles. Bill clearly loves being a dad. "My eldest is in medical school, so there's all sorts of fun things to talk about. My middle child studies international relations so he and I have endless conversations, and my youngest is the most up to date on songs, people and websites. It's great. I miss the mess and the noise. I don't do too many domestic chores myself, but in the normal days I always did the dishes because that was something I was good at, and one of the kids would help me out. Now it's either restaurant or door dash or somebody who comes in and helps."
For much of the past two years, he stresses, he has been focused on beating Covid. Gates's ability to read the future has always been uncanny, so he wasn't surprised when a mystery illness in Wuhan forced the whole world into lockdown. Three years ago, I asked him what kept him awake at night. "The thought of a pandemic," he replied immediately. He even gave a TED Talk in 2015 warning of a supervirus. We all dismissed his worries at the time. He must feel vindicated now. "If the pandemic hadn't come along it would have been a fairly obscure TED Talk. Now it's been watched 43 million times. Everyone who works in infectious diseases just has this fear of human transmissible respiratory viruses. The more people travel and the stronger the interaction between wild species and humans, the more risk of zoonotic cross-species-type diseases."
His TED Talk predicted 30 million deaths and US$10 trillion of economic damage. "It's almost strange how close the particular demonstration I gave was to the real thing," he says. His latest book focuses on how to prevent another fiasco and should be required reading for every leader. "Few generations live through events that cause trillions of dollars of damage and tens of millions of deaths. An earthquake has never done that, or a fire, yet we were more geared up for those. We spend billions of dollars a year on defence but almost nothing on pandemics."
Gates has spent hours poring over statistics from each country's response to the virus: "I'm a data man." Australia, New Zealand and South Korea responded well at the beginning. But he has been most impressed by Vietnam for its health system, messaging and 98 per cent vaccine coverage. "It's an outlier," he says. He's a fan of lockdowns but says countries like Sweden are complicated because despite having lax rules, the population behaved responsibly as though they were locked down, while the US was stricter but had poor rates of compliance. "And Hong Kong is a rare example where they did a brilliant job on lockdowns but that bred a sense of complacency in vaccinating those most at risk. They went into Omicron with a 35 per cent vaccination rate of over-sixties, which is desperate." Meanwhile Japan is unique "because of its obsession with mask-wearing. It has the oldest population but it's lucky because they are also thin, and a lot of death risk relates to obesity and diabetes."
From the beginning Gates, who has the world's best epidemiologists and pharmaceutical CEOs on speed dial, believed that a vaccine was the best way to halt the epidemic and started gearing up for production. "I thought we'd get them quickly and we made them cheaply. I give us a B+ for our vaccines; they have been our greatest weapon. Even [the Chinese vaccine] Sinovac and the Russian vaccine worked pretty well," he says. "Therapeutics have been the greatest disappointment."
Gates appears to treat the virus like an enemy and the pandemic as a war. "I do see this as a battle and the virus as our adversary. I'm constantly wondering whether it's been smarter than us and how it's outwitting us. This should be easier than a war if we are all sharing knowledge and helping each other," he says, "but it's been more divisive than I thought."
In his book he suggests, "Look for the helpers." Some people were greedy and self-obsessed, others altruistic. "In terms of human nature, we've seen that pandemics bring out the best and worst in people. There will always be some degree of panic and selfishness, hoarding, profiteerism, people and countries who thought they could get the vaccines first. We vaccinated a lot of young people in developed countries before old people in South America and Africa. Now the world has an oversupply."
As a technophile who is convinced that technology can solve every problem, it must have been difficult watching people often behave so irrationally and contrary to their own interests, particularly when he became the focus of the antivaxers' ire. When he gave a talk last month, the protesters came out in droves. "Fortunately, they got the day wrong so I missed them. The idea that I would be singled out as somehow playing a nefarious role with respect to this pandemic, that I didn't predict. Yes, I work in the world of vaccines and I have a lot of money. But, you know, to claim that I control people's bodies is bizarre."
What does he say to friends who don't want to get vaccinated? If you're not vaccinated, we don't want to see you? "Yeah, that's going from, 'I don't want to see anybody,' to, 'I only want to see vaccinated people.' "
He won't call the unvaccinated self-obsessed, although he finds it hard to understand why everyone wouldn't want to protect themselves.
Gates is also worried that other vaccine programmes may suffer. "If the weirdness of the view of pandemic vaccines spills over to, say, the measles vaccine in developing countries, where measles still kills 140,000 kids a year, that's going to be tragic."
Some people's refusal to wear masks also baffles him. "The degree to which masks block transmission and infection is really incredible. The most risky thing I did during the whole pandemic was when I went to the Cop26 conference in Glasgow when the infection rate was quite high. The mask compliance was very good when we were out on the street but as soon as you went into the cocktail parties, everybody was drinking with no masks. It was insane. At least I was triple vaxed."
He has never caught Covid. Part of him must feel intrigued by the idea of finally meeting his opponent. "I'm down to testing, like, twice a week now and if I feel poorly. My two sisters and their husbands didn't get it and Melinda and none of my three kids got it either. And at least one of them wasn't supercareful."
Did he break any rules, have any raves, suitcases of wine, birthday cakes with colleagues? "I didn't get the vaccine until it was my turn. I'm learning how to give my own parties now, but I didn't have them these past couple of years. I think most people stuck to their bubbles." Partygate perplexes him. "I don't know the facts particularly well. I do know that if something appears hypocritical, it has a certain resonance for the people who are making sacrifices at that time. So I'd advise them not to have any more parties during pandemics. But I'm not the scold."
He does however feel guilty that he had a far easier pandemic than most of the world. "I had perfect internet, large houses, a private plane with zero risk of infection. I was able to see my kids. Other people suffered way more, particularly the poor."
On the day America first shut down more than two years ago, he remembers leaving the Foundation offices thinking all their projects were in jeopardy now that staff had gone home. "Weirdly, it was my first love that proved me wrong. They all just got on their computers and we were still 90 per cent as productive. We wrote US$2 billion of pandemic-related cheques. And there's not a single one where I would go, 'If you hadn't been in your pyjamas you would have known better than to write that cheque.' "
Microsoft must have done very well. "Microsoft is, like, I don't know, 10 per cent or 12 per cent of my wealth. But stocks in general did well, so yes, it meant we could give away a record amount of money. With Warren Buffett [the investor and Gates's bridge partner], I would talk about how we could get all philanthropists to up their rate of giving, in particular the tech sector because digitisation got a huge boost alongside online shopping."
Gates won't say how much money he made during the pandemic. "In my case you have to adjust for the fact that I was married and now I'm divorced, but I'm still very well off whereas most people struggled and many countries' economies have tanked."
He thinks the young as well as the elderly paid too high a price during the pandemic. In his book he suggests that schools should be kept open wherever possible in the event of another outbreak. "In the inner cities, in the US you have up to two years of learning loss – that's just like a superdramatic thing. A lot of care homes were turned into prisons."
Good leadership is his other crucial requirement in a pandemic. Does Gates think we had the right leaders? He pauses for a long time. He dislikes personal attacks and politics even though it's clear he had little time for presidents Trump, Putin or Xi. "Well, we've lost a lot of good leaders. And it's hard to be a leader. The world has relied on the US in many areas, including in global health. And so to have a pandemic where the global health infrastructure was stressed and the US in the middle of it quit the WHO [World Health Organisation] and claimed that it's Chinese-infiltrated, which is definitely not true, that was tricky, because who fills that vacuum? The US wasn't very present. There were too few good leaders, too few people to listen to and a lot of chaotic messaging."
As the world emerges from this pandemic and with a war raging on the edge of Europe, it feels as though we are entering a new era of fragility and uncertainty. Is he still an optimist or does he feel humanity is sliding backwards? "I think it's a shame and under most objective criteria it's false and sad that people now feel so worried and nervous about their future. Even the pandemic has produced some huge leaps in scientific endeavour and sped up the arrival of vaccines for other illnesses."
But people and politics seem to have become more polarised and the culture wars have become toxic. "Well, the positive way to look at it is to say that, you know, we're doing better with women and gay people's rights, and now we're uncomfortable with transgender and we'll get better at that… I think that people being relaxed about gay people is dramatically better than when I was young. Trans people raise complex issues about treatment, sports and prisons but I'm not an expert on that; I don't have the data. My younger daughter updates me on the terminology and behaviour. Like in her class kids can be gay, transgender, whatever they want."
What annoys him is the way he feels the culture wars have become a distraction. "Politicians are elected to improve schools, the healthcare system, the justice system. So when you get, 'Let's have a "bathroom bill",' do you really want to focus on that as a priority? Are you mostly just picking some edge issue or slogan to try to rile people? Why aren't you talking about the quality of math classes? I worry that our politicians aren't spending enough time trying to ensure that our systems run smoothly. I hope they save a little time while they're doing the culture wars to think about these other things, which is what I think about all the time."
Does anything stop him from sleeping now? "Well, I hope we never have to deal with bioterrorism and an intentionally caused virus. But we are making progress in other areas like a cure for HIV. We cut childhood mortality in half from 1990 to 2020 and we have a chance of cutting it in half again by 2040. We are making huge progress on understanding the microbiome – for the rich world that means solving overnutrition and for the developing world malnutrition, so that's pretty exciting. Then throw in some Alzheimer's prevention. So, despite all the polarisation and imperfect leadership that we have, I still feel very strongly that the human condition is improving."
Is he as positive on a personal level? In a frank interview last month with CBS, Melinda said she was only just beginning to heal. Does he feel he's moved on at all? "Oh yeah, this year is very different." He's not known as a very emotional person, I say. Melinda has always been the chatty, emotive one. "I don't know. I'm not visibly emotional. Maybe somewhere deep inside I am."
He can be romantic. He once said that when the couple walked through the woods in Seattle, he would still always go first to check the way because "Melinda doesn't like cobwebs". And another time he told me he had cried while reading A Gentleman in Moscow with Melinda. "And books like The Heart [by Maylis de Kerangal], I mean, that book makes you cry. All the Light We Cannot See: I cried when I read that too. I don't read enough well-written fiction because I usually pick up nonfiction books." And The Great Gatsby? "That's a strange thing of my youth. I liked all the F Scott Fitzgerald books. He writes so well about growing up."
Does he feel that he's coming to terms with the divorce slowly? "I don't know. I think that simple characterisations aren't appropriate. Melinda and I… I feel lucky that I get to work with her. And we have the annual employee meeting at the Foundation and the Giving Pledge and the annual meeting in June that she and I host together."
Are they friends? "I would say that. In an interview she chose not to use that word, but I'll use it. We have a, you know, superimportant, complex, close relationship where we've chosen to work together. And I'm very happy that we get to work together. You know, we built the Foundation together."
They also had nearly three decades of marriage. "Yeah. And we have three amazing kids."
She said she was grieving for the relationship. Is he? "I'm also grieving the same way she is. Yes. You know, we grew up together. When I got married, yeah, Microsoft was a big deal. But I was a young 38-year-old and she was a mature 28-year old [when they married], and over those next few years, in terms of what we learnt together, what went well, what didn't go well… I mean, that's more than half my adult life. And so, yes, you're very used to going home and saying, 'Oh, I did this well,' or, 'Oh, I did this poorly,' or, 'Oh, I called this person the wrong name.' We did a lot together."
Do you miss that? "Yes, sure. I'm lucky that a part of it continues. Which I think is super."
Was it always going to be almost impossible running one of the biggest companies in the world, then a huge foundation, being globally fêted and balancing a marriage and family life? "I wouldn't choose to use that excuse. I don't think that excuse would have helped me. So no, I was very serious." But he was careless, as F Scott Fitzgerald might say. "No. I think marriages are so complex that to delve into that isn't worthwhile."
His parents, he says, had a long, loving marriage. Gates comes from a very stable, happy background unlike many of the highest achievers. Does he not believe in having therapy? "I've gone to therapists. My parents sent me to a therapist and it was fairly eye-opening for me, because he was the one who said that if I was at war with my parents I was going to win, and that it was a complete waste of my time. And I was like, 'What? I'm gonna win?' He's like, 'Hey, they're your friends. And they're your allies. And there's a world out there. And you are a clever kid and you should start focusing on that.' He was superhelpful. I recommend to people they should try therapists. You have to be willing to take a certain risk and invest a certain amount of time; I don't think it's magical." He has also distracted himself this year by playing tennis. "Tennis is pretty good. But I manage to find time to play tennis and to see a therapist."
In many ways, 27 years counts as a successful married life. Does he feel that too? "Every marriage as the kids leave the house will go through a transition. Mine sadly went through this transition called divorce. But from my point of view it was a great marriage. I wouldn't have changed it. You know, I wouldn't choose to marry someone else."
Would you marry again? "Yes. I'm talking about would I marry Melinda all over again. In terms of my future, I don't have any plans, but I highly recommend marriage."
When Melinda was interviewed by CBS, she said journalists should ask her husband rather than her whether he had cheated. Is that a question he's going to answer? "No." He has already issued a statement saying it was a mistake to meet Epstein. "At the time, I didn't realise that by having those meetings it would be seen as giving him credibility. You're almost saying, 'I forgive that type of behaviour,' or something. So clearly the way it's seen, I made a huge mistake not understanding that."
He and Melinda never had a prenuptial agreement and seem to have divided their wealth amicably, although neither of them appears to care too much about accumulating material possessions. They had an astonishing array of paintings and properties but how much did they matter to him?
"It's hard to know if I care or not, because I'm maxed out." Was there anything he insisted on keeping? "I have a supernice house." They didn't argue at all over who had what? "We spent some time coming up with a fair settlement that we both signed. But neither of us was facing any real reduction in our consumption. It was more about, OK, I'll have x billion to give away, you'll have y billion to give away. It was about the causes."
What about the dog? "She got the dog. She just killed me with that. No, I'm kidding. The world should know how mistreated I was. No, I'm kidding. We weren't mean to each other."
So basically, they both have what they wanted. "Yes. I mean, we're very lucky people. I feel sorry for when people have superlimited resources under any circumstance. And that's not our situation. We can be reasonably generous to the kids, but the vast majority of the money will go to philanthropy."
And when does he think he was happiest? Is there one moment he can remember? Was it starting Microsoft? Or when he was with Melinda and all the kids or travelling the world setting up the Foundation? "I've had lots of happiness in my life to go with sad situations, including my mum dying, my dad dying. I've had close friends die. But overall I still have to say I've been extremely happy."
What does he want as his legacy? "I don't mean to be known at all. I hope that I succeed working with people to eradicate polio, and that in the next three years that's possible. I hope we eradicate malaria. That's more of a 20-year goal. I'm very proud of Microsoft. I spend 10 to 15 per cent of my time advising product groups, which is superhelpful to me because I am seeing the latest in AI and technology. Between 13 and 30 I mostly thought about software. So, you know, in a way the thing I'm most adapted to is sitting in those software design meetings saying, 'Hey, that looks brilliant,' or, 'That looks not brilliant.' "
Does he think he has mellowed since those early years? "I'm meeting very capable people, so we can joke around. So yes, I'm way more mellow than when I thought, 'Unless we get this software product right, Microsoft will fail and my whole life is Microsoft. That's all I am. That's all I do.' In my twenties all I did was Microsoft. I didn't believe in weekends. I didn't believe in vacations. So I guess I'm way less monomaniacal."
In his twenties, did he ever dream he would be this successful? "I always thought I was on the verge of failure. That's part of the mentality. So back then I didn't believe that anybody should have a plane or be too extravagant. I worried it could all go wrong. But I've learnt to relax and enjoy myself more, and that's thanks somewhat to Melinda."
At the end of The Great Gatsby, Fitzgerald writes, "So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past." But Gates doesn't seem the kind of man who will spend much time looking backwards, dwelling on his life. He ends our interview exactly on time, saying, "I've got to get going now."
How to Prevent the Next Pandemic by Bill Gates is available now.
Written by: Alice Thomson
© The Times of London
