When you’re on the world stage, at some point, somebody’s going to throw a tomato or two. It doesn’t matter how beloved you are; somebody out there is going to take aim. Okay, maybe Tom Hanks gets a pass, but come on, that’s Tom Hanks.
When you’re talking about one of the world’s richest people, who made his fortune with one of the most ubiquitous technological developments of our lifetimes, yeah, there are going to be some folks who aren’t fans.
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But don’t expect that his family isn’t going to notice.
By all rights, Bill Gates’s name should be as synonymous with public health as it is with Windows.
Through their foundation, Bill and Melinda Gates have almost redefined the notion of philanthropic giving. Over the past 20 years, the foundation has spent $53.8 billion on various social and public health programs around the globe — it’s a staggering sum, and they regularly out-spend other foundations. In 2015, for example, their foundation gave out $3.8 billion when no other foundation distributed even $1 billion, as Vox reported.
Among the foundation’s many endeavors has been Gavi, a nonprofit dedicated to providing immunizations to poor countries. According to the World Health Organization , Gavi provided 440 million immunizations between 2000 and 2013, saving as many as 6 million lives in the process.
But the foundation’s success with helping poor countries access life-saving vaccines has not made everyone a Bill Gates fan.
Rather, as 2020 saw a global pandemic unfold, Gates became the target of unhinged, unfounded conspiracy theories, perhaps in part because the Gates Foundation has helped fund both the Moderna and AstraZeneca vaccine development as well as other COVID-19 research.
Gates’s prominence and experience with immunization efforts also made him a regular guest on news programs, which have provided increased opportunities to take things he says out of context or to misinterpret them altogether.
That’s how one of the more nonsensical conspiracy theories regarding Gates got started.
As the BBC reported, after Gates mentioned in an interview that in the future, there may be “digital certificates” that show if someone has been vaccinated or recovered from the disease, his words were twisted to suggest he wanted to use vaccines to implant tracking microchips — although to what end isn’t clear.
And yet — even though it’s clearly complete hogwash — that conspiracy theory has proven stubborn, with a YouGov poll showing that 28% of Americans — and 44% of Republicans — believe Bill Gates wants to use vaccines to get microchips into people.
It has all taken Gates quite by surprise.
Calling the theories “bizarre,” Gates told reporters that “I’ve never been involved in any sort of microchip type thing. It’s almost hard to deny this stuff because it’s so stupid or strange that even to repeat it gives it credibility,” Business Insider reported.
But more than how it affects himself, Gates worries that such theories might affect the COVID-19 vaccination effort.
“That’s unfortunate, particularly if it undermines the mask wearing or if it undermines, as the vaccine gets approved, … [how] people not only protect themselves, but protect their loved ones, protect the community by participating in something that’s proven to be safe?” he told CNBC .
But of course, Gates’s family worries about him.
Jenn Gates, a third-year medical student, recently received her vaccination, and she couldn’t resist taking a poke at the conspiracy theorists of the world taking aim at her dad when she posted on Instagram about it.
After expressing her gratitude for “the physicians, scientists, public health experts, pharmacists, and so many others who made this achievement in modern medicine possible,” Gates delivered a little jab, writing that “sadly the vaccine did NOT implant my genius father into my brain – if only mRNA had that power.”
And after seeing what her dad has been through, can you blame her?
Despite everything, Bill Gates remains optimistic about the future.
The COVID-19 pandemic has certainly exposed dozens of ways that pandemic responses can be improved for the future. It has also sparked innovation to a degree that few events can, with multiple vaccines developed in record-shattering time, an achievement Gates cites as the key to the future.
“By the spring of 2021, we should be driving the numbers down and able to see that, as tragic as this was, it won’t last forever,” he said, according to Variety . “I’m hopeful that by late 2021 or in 2022, we can get largely back to normal.”
