Website promotes fake Bill Gates post on mRNA vaccines
- This article is more than one year old.
- Published on August 29, 2023 at 22:28
- 2 min read
- By Natalie WADE, AFP USA
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"Bill Gates: People Who Resist 'mRNA Tsunami' Will Be Excluded From Society," says an August 27, 2023 headline from The People's Voice, a website formerly known as News Punch that AFP has fact-checked numerous times for sharing misinformation.
The article says: "Experimental mRNA jabs are set to replace all of our medicines, according to Bill Gates and the globalist elite, who are warning that we will be forced to take hundreds of mRNA jabs every year if we wish to participate in society."
Screenshots of the article spread across Instagram, Facebook, TikTok and X.
The posts build off false and misleading narratives about the safety of messenger RNA (mRNA) Covid-19 shots, which researchers say have prevented millions of hospitalizations and deaths. Gates himself is a frequent target of vaccine misinformation and conspiracy theories.
Claims that the Microsoft co-founder and billionaire philanthropist said those who refuse mRNA jabs will be excluded from participating in society are baseless.
The X post referenced in the People's Voice article is fabricated -- it does not appear on live or archived versions of Gates's profile. AFP found no other evidence he has ever said the phrase "tsunami of mRNA."
The People's Voice article goes on to attribute the phrase to Melissa Moore, an mRNA researcher and chief scientific officer at Moderna. But the statement is taken out of context.
Moore delivered a TED Talk on the subject in April 2022 (archived here). Here are her remarks, with the part shared online in bold:
"So when I went on clinicaltrials.gov this morning, it turns out that there are over 175 clinical trials now open using mRNA-based medicines that are recruiting patients. Another 54 clinical trials are waiting in the (wings), ready to be opened. So there is a coming tsunami of mRNA medicines."
Moore does not suggest those who "resist" will be "excluded from society." Instead, she says mRNA technology is becoming more popular for treating multiple diseases.
AFP contacted the Gates Foundation for comment, but a response was not forthcoming.
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