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No, Bill Gates Did Not Create Covid-19

February 22, 2021
Health Studio
3 min read
No, Bill Gates Did Not Create Covid-19

This article is part of IranWire's ongoing coverage of Covid-19 disinformation in different countries, in partnership with Health Studio.

By Ximena Hererera for Health Studio

From the beginning of the pandemic, various conspiracy theories fueled by fake news have claimed that big corporations are behind the pandemic. One name that comes up again and again is that of American software developer and philanthropist, Bill Gates.

Even before the pandemic, Gates was being accused of leading global elites in the creation of a totalitarian world government or “New World Order,” and of wanting to reduce the world population, among other baseless claims.

Some conspiracies about Gates stem from a Ted Talk he gave in Vancouver in 2015. Speaking about the 2014 Ebola outbreak, Gates — whose philanthropy focuses on health — warned the audience that if something were to kill more than 10 million people in the next decade it would not be a war, but a virus. At the time the video did not have many views, but it has now been seen more than 40 million times. Clips of the speech have been edited and used out of context to promote the false idea that Gates is behind Covid-19.

One prominent yet unevidenced conspiracy theory claims Gates wants to use vaccines to inject 5G-activated mind-controlling microchips into the population.

Gates has spoken out against such ideas, telling Reuters in June: “It’s almost hard to deny this stuff because it’s so stupid or strange that even to repeat it gives it credibility.” Later on, in July, he said in another interview: “We want to make sure we don’t have people dying just because they don’t have access to the vaccine.”

This is the first pandemic to be experienced in the era of social media, where unverified information can flow instantly to portable devices around the world. This fake news can even make its way into the workings of some democratic institutions. This recently happened in Peru, where a court accused Gates, the Rockefeller family and George Soros, of being the “worldwide criminal elites” behind the baseless “New World Order” conspiracy theory, according to La Vanguardia.

In a country like Venezuela where the population is extremely vulnerable to fake news, these conspiracy theories can have a great influence on people.

This can be seen clearly in the responses to a recent post we put on the Health Studio Venezuela Instagram. The post clarified that Bill Gates is not using the Covid-19 to control the population. Of the hundreds of comments we received, a large proportion expressed a belief in conspiracy theories about the businessman.

No, Bill Gates Did Not Create Covid-19

Comment reads: How ignorant of this young woman, how much will they be paying to wash the face of this Illuminati of Bill

No, Bill Gates Did Not Create Covid-19

Comment reads: Either they are paying her a lot or she is from another planet, he [Bill Gates] has said very well that the idea was to reduce the world population, don't try to change his speech

It’s no secret that the Venezuelan government has a history of promoting anti-capitalist and anti-US sentiment among its country’s population. This serves to benefit the spread of conspiracy theories that demonise figures like Gates, an American billionaire.

In reality, Gates sponsors numerous initiatives that seek to end disease and poverty. In an interview with Reuters, he said he was surprised by the many online publications promoting “evil” conspiracy theories about him and infectious disease expert Dr Anthony Fauci.

He said he hopes that these will pass and remains positive about the possibility that the world will defeat Covid-19.

His daughter, who recently received the first dose of the vaccine, attempted to dispel conspiracy theories aimed at her father in a joke shared to Instagram. She wrote in the post: “Unfortunately, the vaccine did NOT implant my father’s genius in my brain. If only mRNA had that power!”

Humor aside, it is important to be informed and not to get carried away by what can be extremely harmful speculation that has been created to generate chaos. The “infodemic” can be as deadly as the virus. Disinformation, for example, can prevent people from following social distancing measures and even from accepting vaccines, which are crucial to the global recovery from this disease.

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