Vaccine: Best buy for Bill

Satya Ray

What would be the best buy in the post-Covid-19 world?
Not sure? Bill Gates says "Vaccine"
What should be the ideal way to liberate the world from Covid-19?
Bill Gates says "If all the world population get vaccines".

When pandemics out-do the world wars in rav aging the nations, what should the countries buy in the place of weapons? Hold your breath.

Bill Gates says "Vaccine".

Financial Express published a news item based on an interview of Bill Gates which was originally shown by CNBC channel. Bill Gates making $200 billion from vaccines? screamed the headline.

"Bill Gates admitted he is making $200 billion from investments made by his charitable foundation Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation in vaccines…The $200 billion figure came from a Wall Street Journal article titled The Best Investment I've Ever Made on January 16, 2019, Gates explained talked about the $10 billion investment made by his foundation in global health organisations such as Gavi, the Global Fund and the Global Polio Eradication Initiative".

What Mikovits has raised a moot question, Who is Bill Gates? Is he an elected head of any state? Is he an epidemiologist? Vaccine Expert ? Or a virologist? If answer is in the negative, on what authority can he impose his decisions on vaccination on the whole world? Why do the major media organizations and social media platforms confer legitimacy to his glib talk without even asking a single counter question or checking it's authencitity?

All these questions will refuse to die down because they raise ever more questions than Gates apologists can answer.

Without getting stuck in the binary, whether Bill Gates is an angel or apostle of merchants of death, let's move ahead to trace the history that shaped his journey to become the key player in the world's vaccination programme as well as the world market of vaccine.

Twenty years ago, the world's wealthiest man and his wife with half of their fortune, formed the world's largest private foundation. A few years later, another billionaire, Warren Buffet joined them to 'stretch the fence' by pledging half of his wealth. From 2010, they started calling upon other billionaires to join the bandwagon. Interestingly , the mountain of money that they pump in should not be confused with donation, they call it 'investment'. The new avenue of investment contrived by Bill Gates is unique in it's own right. Among the major five fields of his activity, he has focused mainly on world health, world's economic development and most importantly the Global policy and Advocacy division which is the key of all other projects where he has made philanthropic investment .

Policy and advocacy division has become instrumental in moulding the state policy of a country and mobilizing the public opinion in favour of the chosen policy. The advocacy front spread it's influence among the analysts, commentators, researchers, political figures and even social activists who have formidable power to shape public opinion.

At the outset, he worked in the field of control of HIV. He infused money in education sector to make it more gadget dependent. Both of these two failed to achieve commercial gain. He spent money in the international rice research in order to expand the world market of food grains. His foundation has invested huge amount of money in Mosanto and Cargill. These two companies are known to be notorious for their aggressive and subversive strategy in marketing GM foods and seeds. In Mozambique and other African countries Gates foundation worked in tandem with them to reap profit in the name of promoting green revolution.

Almost a decade back, Bill Gates understood that in the trade of vaccines, both the supply and demand end can be controlled to ensure monopoly. In association with the big pharmas manufacturing vaccines, he launched GAVI( Global Alliance for Vaccines and Immunisation) . He has infused $10 billion so far in this project and it is not surprising that he now wants to make windfall of $200 billion in the time of pandemic. Why should not he?

Since he has emerged as key player, the world market of vaccines has expanded six times more than it was in 2010. Nearly $44 is returned on investment of $1 in this industry.

There have been a litany of complaints against GAVI. They are accused of subverting local health programmes, interfering in setting priorities and giving undue advantage to the big vaccine makers. They have no qualms about remaining unfazed because they know the magic of the power they wield. Here, the sharp wit of a writer Vox magazine is worth mentioning, "Bill and Melinda Gates didn't become the most important philanthropists of their generation simply because they have a ton of money. They became important philanthropists by being clever about turning their money into even more money."

Frontier
Vol. 53, No. 26, Dec 28 2020 - Jan 2 2021