Bill Gates Plans To Fund Several Potential Coronavirus Vaccines At The Same Time

By Annie Baker ● Apr 7, 2020
  • Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates is planning to fund the development of seven different COVID-19 (novel coronavirus) vaccines at the same time

Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates is planning to fund the development of seven different COVID-19 (novel coronavirus) vaccines at the same time in order to discover a fix as quickly as possible, even if billions of dollars are involved. This is a plan that Gates revealed in an interview with Trevor Noah recently:

“Our early money can accelerate things. Even though we’ll end up picking at most two of them, we are going to fund factories for all seven just so that we don’t waste time in serially saying which vaccine works and then building the factory,” said Gates in the interview.

This would be a significant commitment in investment for the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation has already committed hundreds of millions of dollars for funding COVID-19 research and development.

Several years ago, Gates warned in a TED Talk that the world avoid a global outbreak of Ebola due to many selfless health workers and some good luck. But the world was not prepared for the next outbreak.

Noah had asked Gates what he was hoping to achieve at this moment in time. And Gates replied:

“If we get the right testing capacity, you can change by literally… millions… the number who are infected. And governments will eventually come up with lots of money for these things. But they don’t know where to direct it. They can’t move as quickly. And so because our foundation has such deep expertise in infectious diseases, we’ve thought about the epidemic.

We did fund some things to be more prepared like a vaccine effort. Our early money can accelerate things… Of all the vaccine constructs, the seven most promising of those, even though we’ll end up picking at most two of them, we’re going to fund factories for all seven. And just so that we don’t waste time in serially saying ‘okay which vaccine works?’ And then building the factory. Because to get to the best case that people like myself and Dr. Fauci are saying… is about 18 months. We need to do safety and efficacy and build manufacturing. And they’re different for the different constructs.

You know it’ll be a few billion dollars we’ll waste on manufacturing for the constructs that don’t get picked because something else is better. But a few billion in this situation where we’re in… where there are trillions of dollars (that’s a thousand times more) being lost economically, it is worth it. In normal government procurement processes and understanding which are the right seven, in a few months, those may kick in. But our foundation, we can get that bootstrapped and get it going and save months because every month counts.”