Bill Gates will address being caught up in COVID-19 conspiracy theories in his new book.
The billionaire business magnate and philanthropist - who recently warned the world faces future pandemics far worse than COVID-19 - was falsely accused of wanting to plant microchips in people's arms via coronavirus vaccinations amid the global pandemic, and the Microsoft co-founder has announced the upcoming tome 'How to Prevent the Next Pandemic', which will go into detail about misinformation and how best to avoid more pandemics.
In a new post on his GatesNotes blog, Gates announced that his new book will be published in May 2022. In an accompanying promo video, he said: "We're not as close to the end of this pandemic as we would like but we have learned a lot about how to stop this happening again."
It includes discussions with Anthony Fauci, chief medical advisor to the President, and the leader of the United Nations Health Agency, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus. He wrote: "No one needs to be convinced that an infectious disease could kill millions of people or shut down the global economy. "If we make the right choices and investments, we can make COVID-19 the last pandemic."
Gates and his ex-wife Melinda's Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation - which has worked to help stop the spread of malaria, HIV and tuberculosis - continues to provide support throughout the pandemic. Gates previously said: "We've taken an organisation that was focused on HIV and malaria and polio eradication, and almost entirely shifted it to work on this.
"This has the foundation's total attention. Even our non-health related work, like higher education and K-12 [schools], is completely switched around to look at how you facilitate online learning." As well as providing funding to help fight the disease, they have been focusing on eliminating extreme poverty.
A statement read: "While we've announced more than $250 million in funding to date and a commitment to leverage our Strategic Investment Fund toward the pandemic, we are increasingly focusing the expertise of our staff and leveraging our partnerships toward the urgent efforts needed to end this pandemic.
"These are unprecedented times, but our belief that all lives have equal value and our commitment to addressing inequities across all of our work remains more critical than ever." The foundation teamed up with the UK’s Wellcome Trust to donate $300m to the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations, which finances independent research projects to develop vaccines against emerging infectious diseases.
The CEPI is aiming to reduce the time required to develop a new vaccine to just 100 days. But Gates, whose organisation pledged $150 million towards their COVAX initiative to get vaccines to poorer countries, insisted more needs to be done. He said: “When we talk about spending billions to save . . . trillions of economic damage and tens of billions of lives, it’s a pretty good insurance policy."
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