And in all likelihood, hundreds of thousands – if not, millions – of Americans will die. That's the message from a Washington Post interview with Microsoft founder Bill Gates, which touched on many of the same subjects from a talk he gave Friday before the Massachusetts Medical Society.

Bill Gates says the U.S. government is falling short in preparing the nation and the world for the "significant probability of a large and lethal modern-day pandemic occurring in our lifetimes."

Gates discussed his efforts to convince the Trump administration to set aside more funding for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and to prioritize the creation of a national response plan that would govern how resources are deployed during a pandemic or biological weapons attack.