Bill Gates

If you show people the problems and you show people the solutions they will be moved to act. William Henry Gates III is a software developer, business leader, investor, and philanthropist, best known for being the co-founder of Microsoft, ranked by Forbes as the wealthiest man in the world from 1995 to 2010 and 2013 to 2017, and for his philanthropy in sanitation, water availability, polio, and farming. Besides all this, he has often been a target of various population control conspiracy theories.

His polio vaccine paralysed 496,000 children in India!
This claim seems to have originated from prominent anti-vaxxer Robert Kennedy, Jr., who cites a 2018 study stating that "a total of 640,000 children developed NPAFP in the years 2000–2017, suggesting that there were an additional 491,000 paralyzed children above our expected numbers for children with NPAFP".

This does not directly support the claim, and if Kennedy had cared to go down in the paper a little further, the study debunks his own claim, stating:

See: “Correlation does not imply causation”.

The study was slammed by critics for having “questionable” inferences, and “should be considered spurious unless proved otherwise by further study and analysis using more rigorous methods”. Some of the “important variables” left ignored in the study that “might have affected the validity of the correlations” are:

The authors responded to these criticisms, but noted a few key caveats, including that "it is possible that new neurotropic enteroviruses colonizing the gut may induce paralysis." They also explicitly stated that:

Unfortunately, the majority of Kennedy’s sheep are unable to understand such terminology or have the ability to research any of the claims made by him.

The claim that Gates and polio vaccines are responsible for the rise in AFP, along with related claims, has been debunked by numerous fact checkers. While it is true that the observed incidence of NPAFP cases increased in the late 2000s and has stayed relatively high, this doesn’t mean the polio vaccine was necessarily the cause. The funding of charities boosted polio vaccinations as well as better diagnosis and reach of healthcare. The BBC reported that monitoring of cases has greatly improved, as well as that polio is not the sole cause of AFP. The Global Polio Eradication Initiative has also reported that acute flaccid paralysis has causes far beyond polio, from Guillain-Barré syndrome to transverse myelitis to snake bite: Other countries, including the UK, have also observed increased reports of unexplained AFP.

Although the polio vaccine can itself result in cases of vaccine-associated paralytic polio, the rate is low according to the World Health Organisation (WHO). Approximately 1 in 2.7 million doses of the oral polio vaccine is associated with paralytic polio. Using this figure, as well as WHO's report that 10 billion doses were administered from 2005 to 2015, the expected number of children paralyzed worldwide over that decade is 3,700 — still a tragic number, but far from 496,000. In order for this to be a reasonable number, 1.3 trillion doses would need to have been administered in the limited 7 year time.

The World Health Organization has said oral polio vaccine (OPV) is an extremely safe and effective tool for immunising children against the disease.

Since the eradication of polio in India, there have been some scares of tainted vaccines. But data from the WHO show that, between 2000 and 2017, there were 17 cases of vaccine-derived poliovirus.

His MenAfriVac paralysed 50 children in Africa!
This claim originates from Candace Owens, who tweeted: “Bill Gates & @WHO have used African & Indian tribal children to experiment w/ non-FDA approved drug vaccines” referring to Bill Gates and the WHO as “vaccine criminals”.

A peer-reviewed study from PMC stated:

To repeat: According to the 2015 evaluation, the incident was a case of "mass psychogenic illness", meaning that the causes were mental or emotional rather than physical. The evaluation found that "all cases were examined by physicians, who did not find cases of paralysis, and all of the affected individuals recovered without incident". The symptoms were triggered in part by “the occurrence of crises among other patients”, and even an unvaccinated child complained of similar illness. Chad’s Ministry of Public Health said the “mass psychogenic phenomenon” was also known as “collective hysteria” or “collective obsessive behaviour”.

The Chad government said of the issue that “all the different medical examinations performed on the patients were normal”. Not only did physicians find no cases of paralysis, but all the children recovered. A Lancet study on meningitis vaccinations in Chad also referred to the Gouro incident: "Coverage in the last phase of the vaccination campaign fell after reports of adverse events after vaccination, concerns that were subsequently shown to be unfounded".

This was fact checked by Africa Check, and The Dispatch Fact Check and was reported on by Quillete and Fogarty International Center.

His tetanus vaccine caused infertility in women!
Either we are lying or the government is lying. But ask yourself, ‘What reason do the Catholic doctors have for lying?’ The Catholic Church has been here in Kenya providing health care and vaccinating for 100 years for longer than Kenya has existed as a country.

Usually we give a series three shots over two to three years, we give it anyone who comes into the clinic with an open wound, men, women or children. If this is intended to inoculate children in the womb, why give it to girls starting at 15 years? You cannot get married till you are 18.

This claim has been debunked by Africa Check and Snopes, and reported on by Retraction Watch, BBC, WHO and the Washington Post.

His PATH vaccine killed seven girls in India!

 * See the main articles on this topic at Wikipedia: and 

The Gates Foundation helped to fund the Program for Appropriate Technology and Health (PATH) HPV vaccination program, and while the program was suspended following the deaths of seven vaccinated girls, none of these deaths was ultimately found to be related to the vaccine. Causes of death included suicide by organophosphorus consumption, drowning, malaria, and a snake bite.

The Indian government is arresting him for this!
The Gates Foundation has not been sued by the Indian government over the PATH vaccination program.

The Italian government is arresting him!
This claim originated with a May 14, 2020 Italian parliamentary session from parliament member Sara Cunial who gave a speech in which she called for the arrest of Gates. She also made references to debunked conspiracy theories, that Gates is using vaccines to sterilize women, that he is using vaccines to implant microchips, and that 5G is responsible for spreading disease including also a fabricated quote from Gates. Other members of parliament objected during the speech, and the call for an arrest was never endorsed by the Italian government. No actions have been made against Gates.

Bill Gates predicted this in Event 201!
Event 201 was an exercise simulating the outbreak of a novel coronavirus, held over 3.5 hours on October 18, 2019. It was hosted by the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security in partnership with the Gates Foundation and World Economic Forum, and was the third pandemic simulation hosted by the center since 2001. While the word "coronavirus" may at first glance elicit alarm, the novel virus considered in the simulation was modeled on SARS, and did not closely resemble the COVID-19 virus. Coronaviruses are not a monolithic group, and the group includes the viruses responsible for SARS, MERS, and the common cold, in addition to that responsible for COVID-19. Given that coronaviruses have been responsible for multiple outbreaks of severe disease in recent decades, it is not surprising that the Center for Health Security would choose a scenario involving one. This argument is similar to claiming that a school principal was behind the burning of a school since she did a fire drill 6 months before it.

Bill Gates has put microchips in coronavirus vaccine!
It was claimed on Facebook that patent number 060606 was for a microchip to be inserted into people's bodies. There was in fact a Microsoft patent application number W0/2020/060606, but it did not mention implanting humans with microchips.

Bill Gates patented the coronavirus!
The Gates Foundation does not have a patent for the COVID-19 virus.

Bill Gates doesn’t wear a mask
No, I use a pretty ugly normal mask. I change it every day. Maybe I should get a designer mask or something creative, but I just use this surgical-looking mask.

Bill Gates isn’t a doctor!
Bill Gates has become an outspoken figure in the realm of disease epidemics, agriculture, and sanitation. However, Bill Gates does not have a conventional medical degree, nor does he claim to be a medical expert; he initially pursued a pre-law major in college, but dropped out after two years. Nevertheless, Gates is clever, well read, and used to directing large groups of people, the latter of which is important for his healthcare work. He claims no ability to treat single patients, but he can arrange the delivery of medicines (recommended by doctors) to literally millions of people. Donald Trump also lacks a scientific degree, but Bill Gates does the opposite of what Trump does: he listens to experts and helps propagate the information they supply, instead of attempting to look smarter than they are and suggesting some very dangerous ideas. A degree is not required to fund research, donate to charity, or invest in innovation. Due to his accolades, Bill has been awarded several honorary degrees, both medical and legal.

Bill Gates refused to vaccinate his kids!
Bill Gates did not refuse to vaccinate his kids.

Bill Gates travelled to Jeffrey Epstein’s island 17 times!
Bill Gates met Epstein multiple times, but flight logs indicate that he never travelled to Epstein's island.

Bill Gates stole MS-DOS code from QDOS!
This is blatantly false, and an obvious ad hominem.

lawyer at the time, Gerry Davis, said that the company's forensic researchers found that infringed on DRI's intellectual property. But DRI never pursued legal action against Microsoft or. Kildall died in 1994, but the rumor that Microsoft copied his creation persisted.

Bill Gates (at Microsoft) sold an operating system to IBM and reaped then-unimaginable rewards, producing speculation as to whether the code was stolen from (QDOS).

Kildall maintained that, and subsequently , had been directly copied from CP/M and thus infringed on his copyright. Davis claimed that forensic experts had proven that MS-DOS had been copied from CP/M, but that in 1981 there was no way to go to court over copyright infringement and get a judgment. The latter claim, at least, was found to be untrue. Just one year earlier, Congress had passed the Computer Software Copyright Act of 1980, which made copyright protection of software explicit. That DRI did not take the battle to court at the time suggests that the accusation was baseless. Microsoft has stated that its hands were clean.

examined the code in question using a set of tools he developed for detecting copyright violations in software, and in 2012 he published his findings in the pages of. He didn't find any evidence that MS-DOS copied code from CP/M (QDOS).

How Zeidman did it and the real history behind it is extensively documented on the pages of IEEE Spectrum and the Journal of Software Engineering and Applications.

Kildall indeed deserves credit for creating the first personal computer operating system, but his operating system didn’t come out of nowhere; it was essentially a simpler version of many other operating systems in use at the time, including Unix, developed in 1969, and VAX/VMS, introduced in 1978. And while Kildall is sometimes remembered as a pauper for “being cheated by Bill Gates,” DRI was actually a successful company for many years, and Kildall sold it to Novell in 1991 for $120 million. Kildall was undeniably very creative and innovative, but he was also a poor businessman who was nonetheless very successful. If he was not as successful as Bill Gates, it wasn’t because Microsoft stole the CP/M source code.

There is a $100,000 Prize if you are able to prove that MS-DOS was copied from QDOS.

Bill Gates Rules For Teens
An often circulated apocryphal story purports a list of 11 or more "rules" that Gates supposedly stated during a commencement speech at a high school graduation. Among it contains notions of "Life is not fair. Get used to it.", "The real world won’t care as much about your self-esteem as much as your school does", "Your school may have done away with winners and losers. Life hasn’t.", and the prize "Be nice to nerds. You may end up working for them." This is often popular among conservatives who frequently complain about young people, political correctness, participation trophies and the like.

The problem is that Gates never said any of it. The actual source of the list is the 1996 book Dumbing Down Our Kids: Why American Children Feel Good About Themselves But Can’t Read, Write, Or Add. by conservative author Charles J. Sykes. While the list was originally circulated from his book, someone along the line decided to attach Gates name to it figuring that the list would be more profound if it were to come from someone as incredibly successful as Gates, as opposed to some cranky writer that few people have heard of.

Bill Gates made a deal with the devil!
A chain email in the 90s to the 2000s branded Gates as the Antichrist or at least having sold his soul to the devil, with the phrase "BILL GATES III" in ASCII spuriously calculated to equate to 666; while the ASCII code for "BILL GATES" does add up, it all falls through with the "III" part, as the code for the uppercase I is 73. The emails also went on to claim that the  Easter egg hidden in Microsoft Excel 95 was developed with sinister intent for Gates to control the world, and its creepy aesthetic fuelled speculation over Gates' supposed satanic connections. However, the Excel minigame was merely written as a fun little bonus by the developers in their spare time as a hidden credits screen with the names and portraits of those who worked on Excel 95, also serving as a homage to the first-person shooter , a game which does contain overtly satanic themes. Ironically enough, Gates himself appeared in a promotional video for Doom 95 which was shown to attendees at a 1995 Microsoft convention, where he discussed about Windows 95 and DirectX's advantages over developing video games in MS-DOS, the Windows 95 port of Doom being the flagship title.

While the email was an obvious shitpost (not unlike the similarly-structured 666 hoax involving the much-reviled children's character ), the antichrist speculation regarding Bill Gates even went to the point where some news outlets such as in the Philippines aired sensationalised articles such as in the paranormal schlockumentary Verum Est, which ran a segment discussing Microsoft's supposed satanic connections (besides similar antichrist rumours against the late Pope John Paul II).

"According to interpretations by some, the Antichrist is said to be Bill Gates, the inventor of computer software. It is said that Windows 95 contained secret number codes, which if calculated would show the title 'Hall of Tortured Souls'. And since computers are used to control nuclear arsenals, security systems, Internet, and stores throughout the world, it is said that Gates wields immense power, and he can lead the destruction of the world.

- Tony Velasquez, Verum Est"

Most viewers unsurprisingly drank ABS-CBN's Kool-Aid and took to the anti-Gates crap as gospel, apparently unable to pick up a litany of factual errors and outright lies the show peddled. Gates was far from the "inventor of computer software"–not by a long shot, though to be fair his prominence in the computer industry made him a poster child and therefore easily misattributed by the uninformed; he did programming work since his teens for one, but one of the few pieces of commercial software credited to him was, a rudimentary driving game written in as a demo that came with the original IBM PC, on top of him co-developing. The "Hall of Tortured Souls" title refers to the Excel minigame, and is not part of the antichrist calculation. And even without any reverse engineering involved, it is clear that Excel or any other Microsoft software would NOT contain any code that somehow taps into computer systems and takes control of them unless modified or explicitly found to do so, e.g. the controversial data collection scheme in Windows 10 and later (which can be neutered if not completely disabled anyway). ABS-CBN later ran ads for Microsoft some years after they aired said fake news reports which arguably served more to boost their ratings through sheer gossip than anything factual.