A viral claim suggesting that Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates is fighting to keep the ingredients of COVID-19 vaccine a 'secret' is found to be a fake. The hoax started after Gates disagreed with sharing the "the recipe for these vaccines" with developing nations.
Bill Gates and his foundation, Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, are frequently involved in one or the other controversies. Since the outbreak of COVID-19 pandemic, several conspiracy theorists have linked Gates with its origin.
What Started the Fake Claim?
The hoax surrounding Gates trying to keep the formula for the vaccine a secret started after Infowars aired a segment from Gates's interview with Sky News. The clipping was shared by a Facebook page, "I Love my President Donald Trump" on April 27, 2021. It was captioned "BILL GATES FIGHTS TO KEEP VACCINE INGREDIENTS SECRET".
The InfoWars segment includes remarks of host Alex Jones questioning Gates's decision. "Billionaire Bill Gates says no to sharing vaccine recipes with poor countries. Well, that's because he doesn't want people to know what's in them. These are experimental. They're not even telling us. They're saying it's proprietary. This is a recipe for total disaster. What do you make of Bill Gates wanting to keep all these vaccines he's helping produce secret. I mean, A, how does he have the power to do that? It shows he's in charge of everything and then, B, that's just another illustration of just how secretive this is."
The Lead Stories reported that while responding to Jones, anti-vaccination conspiracy theorist Mike Adams Smith said that it's very clear that they are putting things in these vaccines that if people knew what was in there, they would not take them.
"And by the way, part of the emergency authorization use that was granted by the FDA allows vaccine manufacturers to not tell the public what ingredients they're using. That's actually part of that emergency authorization protocol, so they can skip the normal requirements for complete disclosure, which means we absolutely do not know what's in these vaccines," he added.
The issue soon flared up with many social media users targeting the Microsoft co-founder. "How shameless this man. He said vaccines patent should not be share with poor countries bloody creepy," tweeted a user.
"LIAR LIAR pants on fire. CDC lies continuously. CDC is owned mostly by Bill Gates who owns patents to vaccines and CCP. Both have stated they want depopulation," wrote another.
Here is What Bill Gates Had Said About Sharing Vaccine Recipes
During an interview with Sky News, Gates on being if it would be helpful to change intellectual property law in order to enable "the recipe for these vaccines to be shared" responded with a firm "no."
Gates justified his stance stating that it was due to the complexity of manufacturing safe vaccines. "There are only so many vaccine factories in the world, and people are very serious about the safety of vaccines," he said. "The thing that's holding things back in this case isn't intellectual property. It's not like there's some idle vaccine factory with regulatory approval that makes magically safe vaccines. You've gotta do the trials on these things. And every manufacturing process has to be looked at in a very careful way," he added further.
