A video clip of Bill Gates speaking at a global health forum discusses the limitations of COVID-19 vaccines, specifically that they are not very effective at preventing infection against later variants, that their effectiveness wanes over time, and that they do not provide sufficient, long-term protection to those who are most vulnerable. A popular anti-vaccine site is using the quote to falsely claim that Gates said that the vaccines “don’t work at all.”
The high-profile nature of the source elevates its risk. Emphasizing that the site is misrepresenting the clip is recommended, as is explaining that the quote is an honest assessment of the challenges facing COVID-19 vaccines in the current pandemic landscape. Consider countering this misinformation by explaining that when COVID-19 vaccines were developed in 2020, they were designed to fight infection and severe illness from the original COVID-19 strain, which they did very effectively. In the more than three years since SARS-CoV-2 began circulating, it has undergone thousands of mutations that have altered the virus and enabled it to better evade both vaccine and infection immunity compared to earlier variants. The global scientific community works extremely hard to keep pace. At every stage of the pandemic and against every variant, unvaccinated people have consistently been at a higher risk than vaccinated people for serious illness, hospitalization, and death from COVID-19.
