Bill Gates, at odds with Trump on coronavirus, becomes a right-wing target
In a 2015 speech, Bill Gates warned that the greatest risk to humanity was not nuclear war but an infectious virus that could threaten the lives of millions of people.
Misinformation about Gates is now the most widespread of all coronavirus falsehoods tracked by Zignal Labs, a media analysis company. The misinformation includes more than 16,000 posts on Facebook this year about Gates and the virus that were liked and commented on nearly 900,000 times, according to a New York Times analysis. On YouTube, the 10 most popular videos spreading lies about Gates posted in March and April were viewed almost 5 million times.
“There’s no question the United States missed the opportunity to get ahead of the novel coronavirus,” he wrote in an opinion column in The Washington Post on March 31. “The choices we and our leaders make now will have an enormous impact on how soon case numbers start to go down, how long the economy remains shut down and how many Americans will have to bury a loved one because of COVID-19.”
The foundation has worked to distribute vaccines in developing countries, advocated family planning through greater use of contraceptives and funded the development of genetically modified crops. Those efforts have prompted unfounded accusations that Gates was hurting the world’s poor with unnecessary drugs and harmful crops while trying to suppress the global population.
In addition to writing the Washington Post op-ed, he called for more and equitable testing in a Reddit “Ask Me Anything” session last month. This month, Gates appeared on “The Daily Show” and said his foundation would fund factories for the seven most promising potential vaccines. The idea spread. From February to April, conspiracy theories involving Gates and the virus were mentioned 1.2 million times on social media and television broadcasts, according to Zignal Labs. That was 33% more often, the company said, than the next-largest conspiracy theory: that 5G radio waves cause people to succumb to COVID-19.
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