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Jennifer Gates, the eldest daughter of Bill Gates, shared a short message to conspiracy theorists after receiving the COVID-19 vaccine last week: Her dad did not implant a microchip into her brain.
The 24-year old medical student posted an image on Instagram last Thursday saying she'd just received the first dose of a COVID-19 vaccine. Along with sharing some appreciation for the vaccine and modern medicine, she signed the post off with a quick joke about her “genius father.”
"PPS sadly the vaccine did NOT implant my genius father into my brain – if only mRNA had that power," she wrote in the post.
"I’d urge everyone to read more and strongly consider it for yourself and your families when you are provided the option," the post also read.
For those blissfully unaware, one of the most prominent pieces of misinformation surrounding the COVID-19 vaccines involves Bill Gates and a plan to implant microchips into the world's population under the guise of a mass vaccination campaign.
Needless to say, these claims are devoid of truth. Earlier this year, people in Italy were sharing a diagram that they claimed were schematics for a 5G chip that was being snuck into the COVID-19 vaccine. A skeptical software engineer did some digging around and discovered that the image was actually a diagram of a guitar pedal.
Despite the extremely limited amount of evidence behind this claim, the idea has become widely circulated over the past year. According to a YouGov poll conducted in May 2020, up to 28 percent of people in the US believed the statement “Bill Gates wants to use a mass vaccination campaign against COVID-19 to implant microchips in people that would be used to track people with a digital ID.” This statistic rose to 50 percent among viewers of Fox News.
Bill Gates himself has responded to some of the conspiracy theories surrounding him and COVID-19, saying “I have no idea where that came from.”
“Do people really believe that stuff?,” he said in an interview with Reuters in January 2021. “Nobody would have predicted that I and Dr Fauci would be so prominent in these really evil theories,” Gates said.
“I’m very surprised by that. I hope it goes away.”
The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation has committed over $1.75 billion to support the global response to COVID-19, namely through funding the development and procurement of new tests, treatments, and vaccines. As a charity, the foundation will not make any hard profit from this, and they’ve ensured any vaccines produced with their will adhere to Global Access guidelines, meaning they will be made widely available at an affordable price.
