Billionaire vaccine evangelists Bill and Melinda Gates have topped off the global effort to roll out a shot against the novel coronavirus as some question the vague clinical trial results of the Gates-funded Pfizer jab.
The couple’s foundation will pour $70 million more into the vaccine development and distribution effort, they announced on Thursday in a press release, adding that Melinda Gates would make the official statement during the Paris Peace Forum.
The pair have earmarked $50 million for COVAX – an international effort to ensure 92 “low- and middle-income countries” have access to the experimental jab(s) – and $20 million for the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness (CEPI), which is supposed to “jumpstart the development for an additional slate of promising vaccine candidates.”
Despite stumping relentlessly for a shot against the novel coronavirus over the past nine months and revealing he hopes to inject all 7 billion humans on earth with it, Microsoft founder Bill Gates appears to have shifted his attention from the current crop of vaccine candidates to the next, arguing the second-generation jabs will have “greater potential for large-scale manufacturability, temperature stability, and low-cost production.”
The timetable for that vaccine – and with it, the much-hoped-for return to “normal” – has apparently stretched further into the future, with Gates hinting on Thursday “we still have a long way to go” despite suggesting “rich countries” could return to their pre-Covid-19 state by the end of 2021 just last month. Foundation CEO Mark Suzman seemed to agree, stating that “ending this pandemic will require the largest public health effort in history” – even as a growing body of statistical evidence suggests Covid-19 is hardly the world-ending mass killer it was initially presented as in the Gates-funded media.
