Billionaire Bill Gates announced Tuesday that he has been infected by the coronavirus, but said there’s nothing to worry about due to the vaccine he champions.
“I’ve tested positive for COVID. I’m experiencing mild symptoms and am following the experts’ advice by isolating until I’m healthy again,” Gates wrote in a Twitter post.
I’m fortunate to be vaccinated and boosted and have access to testing and great medical care.
— Bill Gates (@BillGates) May 10, 2022
“I’m fortunate to be vaccinated and boosted and have access to testing and great medical care,” Gates added.
Gates then put in a plug for his foundation.
“The Gates Foundation is coming together today for the first time in two years, and I am lucky to be on Teams to see everyone and thank them for their hard work,” he posted. We will continue working with partners and do all we can to ensure none of us have to deal with a pandemic again.”
We will continue working with partners and do all we can to ensure none of us have to deal with a pandemic again.
— Bill Gates (@BillGates) May 10, 2022
As noted by the New York Post, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation announced in October that it would spend $120 million to provide a generic version of an anti-COVID-19 pill to poor nations.
In a May 3 interview with host Trevor Noah on Comedy Central’s “The Daily Show,” Gates recently dismissed the theory that the coronavirus could have emerged from a lab in Wuhan China that studies viruses.
Bill Gates says covid originated in bats, and blames climate change ?pic.twitter.com/0lzdUPCEer
— Dr. Eli David (@DrEliDavid) May 4, 2022
“It’s quite clear in this case that it came across through animals,” Gates said, according to Fox News. “And almost all our diseases, like HIV, crossed over from chimpanzees in Africa quite some time ago. Ebola came from bats. This, also, with one step in between, came from bats.”
In an interview the same day at the 92nd Street Y in New York City with CNN’s Fareed Zaharia, Gates said the disease is not as fearsome as it was once considered to be.
Bill Gates on Covid 19.
“We didn’t understand that it’s a fairly low fatality rate & that it’s a disease mainly in the elderly, kind of like flu is, although a bit different than that.” pic.twitter.com/qkJbOP05ww
— THENO1WAFFLER (@TheNo1Waffler) May 5, 2022
“It wasn’t until early February, when I was in a meeting, that experts of the foundation, said ‘there’s no way’” COVID-19 could have been limited in its spread, he said.
“At that point, we didn’t really understand the fatality rate. We didn’t understand that it’s a fairly low fatality rate and that it’s a disease mainly of the elderly, kind of like the flu, although it’s a bit different than that,” Gates said.
Do you think the COVID-19 pandemic is over?
Gates recently wrote a book, “How to Prevent the Next Pandemic,” that came out this month.
“There’s a lot of diseases out there,” he said during February’s Munich Security Conference in Munich, Germany, according to The Hill.
Gates said two things must happen to fight the next pandemic.
“One is to make sure the limited supply [of a vaccine] is allocated in a more rational way,” he said, according to The Hill. “The second is to just have so much capacity that you can supply all of mankind with two doses in a very short period of time.”
