As Covid-19 was ricocheting from country to country in early April 2020, Microsoft founder Bill Gates assembled the leaders of the globe’s leading diagnostic companies on a video call to discuss what to do. As the co-founder of the world’s largest charity, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the billionaire knew that only a coordinated response across companies, countries, and agencies could hope to beat the virus by finding not just vaccines but also developing testing at scale to halt its spread. The chief executives of Roche, Lilly, Abbott, Siemens, Thermofisher and Biomereriux were all on the call, which was…

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