Former Microsoft chairman Bill Gates has junked a conspiracy theory that he wants to create a mass coronavirus vaccine so he can use it to place microchips in people.
The billionaire-philanthropist made the comments in a Wednesday interview with CBS Evening News with Norah O'Donnell, in which he was asked about the disease and the progress on vaccines, as well as the unfounded theory about his motive to want a vaccine.
Gates said of the circulating rumors during a CNN Town Hall interview that it is a "bad mixture of pandemic and social media" and people who look for a simple explanation.
Altered images and fabricated news stories made by conspiracy theorists -- shared thousands of times on social media sites, messaging apps, in different languages -- that target Gates have gained momentum on the internet since the start of the global health crisis.
"I hope it will die down as people get the facts. We need to get the truth out there," Shawn Langlois of MarketWatch quoted him as saying in his report.
In a recent survey, 44 percent of Republicans said they believe the Microsoft co-founder is plotting to use a coronavirus drug to implant tracking devices on people.
"There is no connection between any of these vaccines and tracking type thing at all... I don't know where that came from," Gates told O'Donnell on Wednesday, as per the MarketWatch story.
Gates, whose foundation has donated millions to COVID-19 vaccine and treatment studies, addressed a survey from Yahoo News/YouGov that found 28 percent of American adults believed a debunked conspiracy theory that suggests Gates planned to use a potential coronavirus drug to implant microchips in billions of people to monitor their activities.
A similar theory pushes the claim that the PCR test to detect COVID-19 is in fact used to place a "Gates-funded microchip" in people. Another theory has also claimed that a Gates-backed polio vaccine rendered 490,000 children in India paralyzed, while another claims that he said the COVID-19 vaccine could kill millions of people.
Anthony Fauci, the chief of the U.S. National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, has been a regular fixture in the America's coronavirus response and has been urging people to apply scientifically-supported measures to fight the disease and not fall for misinformation. This has led to conspiracy theorists fanning false information about Fauci in an attempt to tarnish his name.
