Top Stories

Rice sales stampede: NCS continues humanitarian visits to victims’ families in Lagos.

Again,  Obi faults Coastal highway amid growing hunger

World Bank chief expects rich nations to meet African donation requests

Navy rescues 250 persons from boat mishap in Rivers

Petrol scarcity shuts down socio-economic activities nationwide

Reps urge NERC to suspend hike in electricity tariff

Bill Gates says pandemic conspiracies ‘Crazy and evil’, allays fear on COVID-19 vaccine safety

Bill Gates

Bill Gates says pandemic conspiracies ‘Crazy and evil’, allays fear on COVID-19 vaccine safety

By Admin
Microsoft co-founder turned philanthropist Bill Gates said on Wednesday that he has been taken aback by the volume of “crazy” and “evil” conspiracy theories about him spreading on social media on the COVID-19 pandemic.

Gates in an interview with Reuters said the millions of online posts about him and top U.S. infectious disease expert Anthony Fauci were “crazy conspiracy theories.”

He explained that the conspiracy theories  had likely taken hold in part because of the combination of a frightening viral pandemic and the rise of social media.

“Nobody would have predicted that I and Fauci would be so prominent in these really evil theories.

“I’m very surprised by that. I hope it goes away,” he added.

Gates, a billionaire who stepped down as chairman of Microsoft Corp in 2014, has through his philanthropic Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation committed at least 1.75 billion dollars to the global response to the COVID-19 pandemic.

That includes support for some makers of vaccines, diagnostics and potential treatments.

Since the pandemic began a year ago, millions of conspiracies have spread over the internet, fueling misinformation about the coronavirus, its origins and the motives of those working to fight it.

They include claims that Fauci and Gates created the pandemic to try and control people, that they want to profit from the virus’ spread, and that they want to use vaccines to insert trackable microchips into people.

“But do people really believe that stuff?

“We’re really going to have to get educated about this over the next year and understand.

‘’How does it change peoples’ behaviour and how should we have minimized this,” he said.

Gates praised Fauci and Francis Collins, head of the U.S. National Institutes of Health, as “smart” and “wonderful people.”

He said he looked forward to seeing them able to work effectively and speak the truth under the new administration of President Joe Biden.

During former President Donald Trump’s handling of the pandemic, Gates said, it had “sometimes felt like they were the only sane people in the U.S. government.”

“I’m excited about the team that Biden has picked” to tackle the health crisis,” he said.

Gates said he was also pleased that under Biden, the United States had rejoined the World Health Organisation.

“He’s appointed smart people, and the fact that Fauci won’t be suppressed,” Gates said. (Reuters

Meanwhile on Tuesday night during a virtual press conference with selected African journalists ahead of the launch of the 2021 Bill and Melinda Gates Annual Letters, Gates said it will be a tragedy, if a country continues to have an epidemic due to false vaccine rumours.

According to him, people who care about childhood death knew that vaccines were the best thing that ever happened.

“Smallpox killed over a million people a year, and because of vaccines, now smallpox is gone.

“The miracle of vaccines is very clear. When a child dies, that’s a very clear thing. We have very good statistics on what that was like before we got these new vaccines.

COVID-19
COVID-19: Race for vaccine

“Over 10 million children were dying under the age of five every year, with a high portion of those being in Africa.

“The more people learn about vaccines, the more amazed they should be about how fantastic they are,” he said.

The philanthropist noted that the safety issues involved in vaccines development were challenging considering the trials and need to use extremely well regulated factories.

“A factory can only be built in a country whose regulator is a good standard regulator and can look at every aspect of that factory, making sure that it’s very very good.

“There are very few countries that have that safety review capacity that the world trusts,” he said.

Speaking on his COVID-19 vaccination experience, Gates said that he got his first dose of the vaccine last week.

“There are very, very few side effects, and it is protecting people. In fact, almost no one who has been vaccinated has had severe disease which is really quite miraculous.

“I hope people will read the facts about vaccines, and how they’ve worked against other diseases.

“Now, we have millions and millions of people who’ve taken this vaccine and we’re tracking that experience to make sure we were right about the overall safety,” he said.

Gates said he was inoculated with the Moderna vaccine, saying he had no choice in the vaccine administered to him.

“I ended up getting the Moderna vaccine, I had no choice, they don’t ask what your preference is.

“There are only two vaccines approved in the United States right now, Pfizer and Moderna. They’re both very good vaccines and very safe.

“Anything that has gone through a phase three, and is approved by the UK or U.S regulator, I’m a huge believer in the quality of that work,” he said.