Healthcare

FACT CHECK: Did Bill Gates Say, ‘Only The People Who Have All The Vaccines Will Still Be Able To Move Freely’?

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An image shared on Facebook claims Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates said, “Only the people who have all the vaccines will still be able to move freely.”

Verdict: False

There is no record of Gates making this statement.

Fact Check:

Gates is a vocal proponent of vaccinations and invests billions of dollars in their development and distribution through the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, a private charitable organization. The image shared on Facebook features a headshot of Gates along with a quote attributed to him that reads, “Only the people who have all the vaccines will still be able to move freely.”

There is, however, no evidence that Gate ever made such a statement. The Daily Caller News Foundation found no media reports linking the quote to Gates. A search of his books, “The Road Ahead” and “Business @ The Speed of Thought,” as well as his personal blog, likewise turned up no instances of the quote.

The quote appears to be a misinterpretation of a statement Gates made while participating in an online TedTalk in March 2020. Gates discusses options for how countries can handle the coronavirus pandemic and at one point states, “Eventually, what we’ll have to have is certificates of who is a recovered person, who is a vaccinated person, because you don’t want people moving around the world — where you’ll have some countries that won’t have it under control, sadly — you don’t want to completely block off the ability for those people to go there and come back and move around.”

While Gates contemplates the connection between vaccinations and travel, he clearly states that he does not want to completely limit people’s ability to move based solely on their vaccination status, contrary to the quote attributed to him on Facebook.

The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation did not respond to a request for comment.