Microsoft founder and philanthropist Bill Gates took to LinkedIn on Wednesday to discuss coronavirus. "This scenario was a nightmare I was worried about," he said during a livestream. He referred to his previous talks calling for more preparation in case of a pandemic.

"The US unfortunately let a level of infections come in in February that meant that we couldn't be like Taiwan or South Korea in terms of catching it early and never having a large number of cases," said Gates. "So we've had to do very drastic measures to get the number of cases down."

He said that a number of places across the United States have done well in implementing stay at home measures. "It’s a mistake not to have the entire country take these extreme measures," he said. "It's understandable that people find this shocking."

Gates also predicted it would take the world about 18 months to recover, as that's the timeline for a potential vaccine. "Until you’ve got that vaccine widely used, life will still be not back to normal," he said, adding that things might be semi-normal by June. But he expects large public gatherings still likely won't be allowed.

Responding to a LinkedIn user's question about whether the economy could recover its lost jobs, Gates said: "The government did not do its duty to prepare for this well in advance but now people are focused on it and we can see different countries responding in different ways."