Fact Check: Bill Gates Will NOT Personally Profit From A COVID-19 Vaccine And He Does NOT Own A Company That Will Put A Tracking Microchip In You

Fact Check

  • by: Eric Ferkenhoff
Fact Check: Bill Gates Will NOT Personally Profit From A COVID-19 Vaccine And He Does NOT Own A Company That Will Put A Tracking Microchip In You Fact Check: Bill Gates Will NOT Personally Profit From A COVID-19 Vaccine And He Does NOT Own A Company That Will Put A Tracking Microchip In You Not For Profit

Will Bill Gates personally profit from a COVID-19 vaccine and does he own a company that plans to implant microchips in everyone to track them? No, that's not true: Gates has spent more than $300 million of his own fortune to encourage development of treatments and vaccines for the novel coronavirus, as well as efforts to slow the pandemic's spread, but there is no profit in it for the Microsoft co-founder. In fact, he and his wife, Melinda, have pledged to give almost all of their estimated $106 billion wealth to charity. ID2020, the entity that allegedly has a microchip plan for the world's population, does not have a microchip plan and is not owned by Gates.

These claims are among several conspiracy myths that villainize Gates, one of the world's most generous philanthropists, and are included in a post (archived here) shared on Facebook on April 9, 2020. It included a photo of Gates with Dr. Anthony Fauci, with the caption "This picture should disturb you. If it doesn't you better wake up" The text next to the image opened:

How are more Americans not completely outraged about what is going on in our country!?
Does no one else find it weird that #BillGates - an unelected official, a computer guy with no medical degree, seems to be the world's leading health expert on the coronavirus, telling everyone what we need to do & when its safe to go back to normal?

This is what the post looked like on Facebook at the time of writing:

Facebook screenshot

The full text of these posts read:

How are more Americans not completely outraged about what is going on in our country!?
Does no one else find it weird that #BillGates - an unelected official, a computer guy with no medical degree, seems to be the world's leading health expert on the coronavirus, telling everyone what we need to do & when its safe to go back to normal?
Its a little odd, that the same guy who led Event 201 just a few weeks before the first outbreak in China, where they had an exercise preparing & planning for a pandemic outbreak & can you guess what virus they chose for this "hypothetical" exercise? If you guessed the coronavirus you must be a psychic!
This is the same guy that's going to profit the most from this virus with his vaccines he's pushing on everyone. I can guarantee you right now they will make this a seasonal virus just like the flu, so they can profit off the vaccines every year.
In the past week, he's been making the media rounds on CNN & other shows saying we can all gather again once we've all been vaccinated! In another interview, he said that you will need to provide a vaccination certificate to work & travel.
He also has a company called ID 2020 which will track everyone through microchips the size of a grain of rice that they inject into you with a needle. It will track everywhere you go & everything you do, but please don't take my word for it, google ID 2020. This is not the future, they have already done it in some countries & even some workplaces.
Might I also add that this diabolical man is also THE largest donor of the World Health Organization? Think about that folks. THERE. IS. AN. AGENDA!!!"
The statement that Gates is "an unelected official, a computer guy with no medical degree" is accurate. In fact, Gates is a college dropout. He attended Harvard University, but quit in 1975 to start Microsoft with childhood friend Paul Allen. In 2007, he got an honorary doctorate from the university. Gates, who has never served in or for the government, stepped down from day-to-day operations at Microsoft in 2008 and turned his attention to philanthropy, including funding vaccination research and other health concernss.
No, Gates does not hold a medical degree, but he does not hold himself out to be "the world's leading health expert on the coronavirus." Instead, his foundation hires experts on viruses and funds grants for other others to conduct research and projects.
Is he "telling everyone what we need to do & when its safe to go back to normal"? Yes, he does frequently offer his opinion on those topics. But since he is not a govenrment official, he has no power to force anyone to do anything and does not make a decision about when it is "safe to go back to normal."

Gates participated in a "Ted Talk" in March titled "How we must respond to the coronavirus pandemic":

The "Event 201" reference in the post concerns a "tabletop exercise" on October 18, 2019, in which the John Hopkins Center for Health Security teamed up with the World Economic Forum and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.

A website for the event described it as a "global pandemic exercise":

The exercise illustrated areas where public/private partnerships will be necessary during the response to a severe pandemic in order to diminish large-scale economic and societal consequences.

Lead Stories debunked any suspicion that the exercise was evidence that Gates was involved in a coronavirus plot. Read our story for more: Fake News: 'High-Level Exercise' Conducted 3 Months Ago Did NOT Show That A Coronavirus Pandemic Could Kill 65 Million People

The claim that Gates is "going to profit the most from this virus with his vaccines he's pushing on everyone" is false. There are many potential vaccines in development, with some already in human testing. Gates does not have a personal financial interest in any of them, although he has spent money paving the way for the production and distribution if one of the vaccines is proven safe and effective.

The Wall Street Journal raised the question of Gates profiting from the pandemic in a May 11, 2020, profile titled Bill Gates Has Regrets:

A spokeswoman for Mr. Gates said the couple have pledged to give most of their estimated $106 billion fortune to charity before they die or in their will. "These conspiracy theories and misinformation are completely false," she said.

The post's claim that coronavirus will become "a seasonal virus just like the flu," could be true. Scientists and medical professionals, including Fauci, who is director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, have warned that the coronavirus could be seasonal and return, if it actually is vanquished in the first place, with a new wave in the fall. Others say the virus "may never go away."
To claim that Gates will make COVID-19 seasonal "so they can profit off the vaccines every year," relies on Gates having control of the novel coronavirus. There is no evidence that he, or anyone, can tell the virus if it should become seasonal. Also, there is no mechanism for Gates to profit personally from the virus or vaccine.
The post also claims that Gates has "been making the media rounds on CNN & other shows saying we can all gather again once we've all been vaccinated!" Again, while Gates predicted that mass gatherings will be risky until there is a vaccine, he has no power, beyond persuasion, to tell you when you can gather in large numbers again.
The same goes for the claim that Gates said "you will need to provide a vaccination certificate to work & travel." While he may have suggested that as one approach, he has no power to create that requirement.
This claim appears to stem from this interview, which is summarized here on Gates' own blog, in which he answers 31 questions about the pandemic:

What changes are we going to have to make to how businesses operate to maintain our economy while providing social distancing?

The question of which businesses should keep going is tricky. Certainly food supply and the health system. We still need water, electricity and the internet. Supply chains for critical things need to be maintained. Countries are still figuring out what to keep running.

Eventually we will have some digital certificates to show who has recovered or been tested recently or when we have a vaccine who has received it.

The claim that Gates "has a company called ID 2020 which will track everyone through microchips the size of a grain of rice that they inject into you with a needle" is also unfounded.

Microsoft, for which Gates is now only an adviser, was a founding member of the ID2020 Alliance in 2018, which states this in its FAQ:

A digital identity, as we see it is a grouping of digital identifiers. So, if you interact with any technology connected to the Internet, or to a mobile network, you have a digital identity.

However, the posting gets wrong the idea that microchips "the size of a grain of rice" would be injected into people to track everything we do, and everywhere we go. Lead Stories also examined this claim, which stems from a Microsoft filing of a patent application for "cryptocurrency system using body activity data." The patent makes no mention of microchips being implanted in people. Read our debunk titled Fact Check: Fact And Fiction About Microsoft Patent Application 'WO2020060606 - CRYPTOCURRENCY SYSTEM USING BODY ACTIVITY DATA'

Finally, the post makes this claim:

Might I also add that this diabolical man is also THE largest donor of the World Health Organization? Think about that folks. THERE. IS. AN. AGENDA!!!

It is true that the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation may now be the single-largest donor to WHO, following the halt in funding by the United States -- a stoppage announced by President Trump on April 14, 2020. But that's according to the WHO's 2018-2019 budget.

screenshot_38.png

In a May 2017 story titled "Meet the world's most powerful doctor: Bill Gates" in POLITICO, Gates' role with WHO was examined, even criticized.

Over the past decade, the world's richest man has become the World Health Organization's second biggest donor, second only to the United States and just above the United Kingdom. This largesse gives him outsized influence over its agenda, one that could grow as the U.S. and the U.K. threaten to cut funding if the agency doesn't make a better investment case.

The result, say his critics, is that Gates' priorities have become the WHO's. Rather than focusing on strengthening health care in poor countries -- that would help, in their view, to contain future outbreaks like the Ebola epidemic -- the agency spends a disproportionate amount of its resources on projects with the measurable outcomes Gates prefers, such as the effort to eradicate polio.

Concerns about the software billionaire's sway -- roughly a quarter of WHO's budget goes toward polio eradication -- has led to an effort to rein him in. But he remains a force to be reckoned with, as WHO prepares to elect one of three finalists to lead the organization.

"All of the candidates are going to have to ally with him in some way," said Sophie Harman, associate professor of international politics at Queen Mary University of London. "You can't ignore him."

Evidence of Gates' unprecedented influence abounds in ways subtle and showy.

Already a decade ago, when Gates started throwing money into malaria eradication, top officials -- including the chief of the WHO's malaria program -- raised concerns that the foundation was distorting research priorities. "The term often used was 'monopolistic philanthropy', the idea that Gates was taking his approach to computers and applying it to the Gates Foundation," said a source close to the WHO board."

Here are some of the other false claims about Bill Gates debunked by Lead Stories;

Fact Check: Video Does NOT Reveal That Coronavirus Vaccine Was Patented By Bill Gates In 2006

Fact Check: Bill Gates, WHO & World Bank NOT 'Trumped' By President Amid Coronavirus

Fact Check: Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation HQ Does NOT Read 'Center for Global Human Population Reduction'

Fact Check: No Proof Is U.S. Planning to Force Vaccinations With Bill Gates Amid Coronavirus

Fact Check: Fact And Fiction About Microsoft Patent Application 'WO2020060606 - CRYPTOCURRENCY SYSTEM USING BODY ACTIVITY DATA'

Fact Check: 496,000 Children In India Were NOT Paralyzed From 'Bill Gates Polio Vaccine' From 2000-2017

Fact Check: Bill Gates CANNOT Prescribe Drugs, And 'Dr. Sebi' Was Barred From Practicing In Some States

Fact Check: India Is NOT Suing Bill Gates For Vaccination Deaths

Fact Check: No 'Deep State' Operators Trying To Ban Hydroxychloroquine

Fact Check: Bill Gates Does NOT Have Access To Your DNA And Does NOT Have Ownership In WHO

Fact Check: Bill Gates Did NOT Write Open Letter Saying COVID-19 Reminds 'We Are All Equal'

Fact Check: NO Plan By Bill Gates And The Vatican To Depopulate World With Coronavirus Vaccine; Video Misinterprets Gates' Speech

Fake News: Bill Gates Did NOT Help Fund Patent For Coronavirus

Fake News: 'High-Level Exercise' Conducted 3 Months Ago Did NOT Show That A Coronavirus Pandemic Could Kill 65 Million People

Fake News: Bill Gates Did NOT Admit Vaccinations Are Intended To Reduce Population

Fake News: Melinda Gates Did NOT Say We Must Discriminate Against All White People

Fake News: Former Bill Gates Doctor Did NOT Say Billionaire Refused To Vaccinate His Children

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Lead Stories is working with the CoronaVirusFacts/DatosCoronaVirus Alliance, a coalition of more than 100 fact-checkers who are fighting misinformation related to the COVID-19 pandemic. Learn more about the alliance here.


  Eric Ferkenhoff

Eric Ferkenhoff has been a reporter, editor and professor for 27 years, working chiefly out of the Midwest and now the South. Focusing on the criminal and juvenile justice systems, education and politics, Ferkenhoff has won several journalistic and academic awards and helped start a fact-checking project at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, where he continues to teach advanced reporting. Ferkenhoff also writes and edits for the juvenile justice site JJIE.org.

 

Read more about or contact Eric Ferkenhoff

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