Gates was quite correct in this speech. However, due to Human Nature, with regard to major national/global events, almost nothing gets done until it becomes a crisis. In this speech, it's almost as if Gates had just come back from 5 years into the future.
I have heard others talk about the same things back during the AIDS epidemic, including of all people, Pat Robertson. I remember a Robertson saying something like, “Why do we always wait until the next catastrophe before we have a plan?”