Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates through his (Bill and Melinda Gates) foundation has committed more than $300 million as a response in fighting the coronavirus pandemic. With more than 4.2 million coronavirus cases globally, Gates said in an interview that he is working on solving the practical problem of finding enough glass vials, as much as seven billion vials for the vaccine.
The huge commitment is unparalleled in history hitherto, in fighting a disease. Gates also told in an interview that his foundation would be devoting its "total attention" in fighting the pandemic. In order to get back to normal, Gates writes in one of his blog posts that vaccine remained the only option left, as most of the drugs being developed were "nowhere near powerful."
Biggest vaccine funder
Further Gates names his foundation as the "biggest funder of vaccines in the world," dwarfing its entire previous works. He says that he "knows" a COVID-19 vaccine will be done somewhere between nine months to two years. The challenge, however, he says, is in making seven to 14 billion vials.
In a recent interview to The Wall Street Journal on Monday, Gates said that he's working with pharmacy companies, to jump "practical hurdles" such as making enough glass vials for a potential vaccine. Gates writes in the blog that his foundation, the Governments and organizations such as Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations (CEPI) "made it clear" that they would support "whatever it takes" in finding a coronavirus vaccine.
Conspiracies mount as Gates purchase huge shares
Further, it was reported that the Foundation had purchased shares that value at almost $205 million from nine big pharmaceutical companies. Added to this, the foundation is working with CEPI, WHO and other governments on how to finance various factories for making billions of vaccines costing billions of dollars.
These come at a time when increasing coronavirus conspiracy theories accuse that Gates created the novel coronavirus in order to profit by creating a vaccine. Not only had he warned in 2015's TED talk that viruses posed "greatest risk of global catastrophe." But also in December 2016 Gates warned President Donald Trump on the risk of a pandemic in the US, reports WSJ.
He also told that he felt "terrible" as his warnings went unheeded. To these conspiracies, Gates had responded in an interview to CGTN saying, "There are lots of attacks out there," but he adds "people have been really positive."
In another interview, he said that he knows that their efforts could result in the loss of a few billion dollars, but he says its worth it in the face of the coronavirus pandemic that has resulted in thousand times more losses. What remains for these conspirators is to see if Bill Gates would really profit from the investments he made or is it purely philanthropic.
