Bill Gates Coronavirus Conspiracy Theories

Submission 7,726

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About

Bill Gates Coronavirus Conspiracy Theories refer to series of unsubstantiated claims and debunked theories about Gates' and his organization's role in the spreading and treatment of the coronavirus. These include one prevalent and widely reported, among conspiracy theory networks and figures, that Gates has been using vaccines and microchips to track survivors of the pandemic.

Origin

On January 23rd, 2020, the conspiracy theory website Infowars ^[1] published the article "BILL AND MELINDA GATES FOUNDATION & OTHERS PREDICTED UP TO 65 MILLION DEATHS VIA CORONAVIRUS – IN SIMULATION RAN 3 MONTHS AGO!" The article alleges that the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation owns the "patent" on the virus and is working on a vaccine.

Factcheck.org^[2] disputes the article, clarifying, "There was in fact an exercise (called “Event 201”) that took place in October that was hosted by the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security -- which the Gates Foundation participated in -- that focused on emergency preparedness in the event of a “very severe pandemic.” But it didn’t deal with 2019-nCoV, and it didn’t make real-life predictions about death tolls."

Spread

Months later, the theory about Gates' connection to the virus continued to pick up steam. On April 6th, 2020, Emerald Robinson, the White House correspondent for Newsmax, tweeted, ^[3] "The more you study this virus, the more you find the same name: Bill Gates. He's the 2nd largest funder of WHO. He's building 7 vaccine labs. Fauci. Tedros. Event 201. ID2020. He basically controls global health policy. What's the plan? Using vaccines to track people." The tweet goes on to point to the same debunked theory, that the Gates' foundation hosted a simulation about the virus months before it took hold, as the basis for their post. The tweet received more than 10,000 likes and 6,900 retweets in less than one month (shown below, left).

Two days later, Fox News host Laura Ingraham asked Attorney General Willaim Barr Gates' connection to "digital certificates," a type of tracking, on the Ingraham Angle. The post received more than 1 million views in less than one month (shown below, right).

The use of "digital certificates" in this context, however, is incorrect. Digital Certificates are not a form of biohacking but a way to transmit encrypted data digitally in the same way people verify electronic signatures. According to Factcheck.org:

Digital certificates are used to send encrypted information over the internet, as in the common case of electronic signatures which are used to verify identity. They were officially defined by what is now called the Telecommunication Standardization Sector in 1988 and have always been virtual, not physical.

When Gates mentioned their use in the forum, he was referring to digital certificates as part of an effort to create a digital platform that would expand home-based, self-administered testing for COVID-19, the Gates Foundation said in an email to FactCheck.org.

South Korea, which has implemented an extensive testing system, created a website that showed information about where patients who tested positive for COVID-19 had been in order to alert others in the area. Although the information on the site is anonymous, there has been some criticism that it’s an invasion of privacy.

However, the theories continued to spread. On April 13th, conservative operative Roger Stone said on the Joe Piscopo radio show,^[6] "Whether Bill Gates played some role in the creation and spread of this virus is open for vigorous debate. I have conservative friends who say it’s ridiculous and others say absolutely[…]He and other globalists are using it for mandatory vaccinations and microchipping people so we know if they’ve been tested. Over my dead body. Mandatory vaccinations? No way, Jose!

On April 15th, conservative commentators Candace Owens and Diamond and Silk both shared theories that Bill Gates and the World Health Organization had been testing vaccines on people without proper approval (shown below).^[4]

According to the Daily Beast,^[5] Gates has become a type of conservative "bogeyman," akin to George Soros, a liberal billionaire donor who is frequently at the center of conspiracy theories. They write:

In the coronavirus era, though, rumors and conspiracy theories about Gates have boomed. On social media, Gates has been wrongly accused of everything from plotting out the coronavirus pandemic ahead of time to distributing plush souvenir coronavirus toys to celebrate the virus’s death toll.

Gates has taken on the mastermind role in the right-wing conspiracy imagination typically reserved for billionaire Democratic donor George Soros, according to Brooke Binkowski, the managing editor of fact-checking site Truth or Fiction.