this post was submitted on 08 May 2025
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politics

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(page 2) 50 comments
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[–] Glitterbomb@lemmy.world 7 points 1 day ago

Bill gates is always spending his money eradicating diseases. Maybe he can eradicate this musk disease too

[–] brisk@aussie.zone 43 points 1 day ago (14 children)

How many children died because Bill Gates lobbied for the Oxford Covid-19 vaccine to be patented?

[–] TronBronson@lemmy.world 13 points 1 day ago

Idk how many people have died from Covid 19 vax? I keep taking it and my cock is huge, no other side effects

[–] MajesticElevator@lemmy.zip 9 points 1 day ago (5 children)

Your claim seems a bit BS. It was apparently to have a better distribution and quality.

AstraZeneca claimed not to get profits from the vaccine sales. This seems kind of fair knowing that doses were sold at about $4 USD (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oxford%E2%80%93AstraZeneca_COVID-19_vaccine#Early_development - https://reliefweb.int/report/world/uk-donates-20-million-more-oxford-astrazeneca-vaccines-countries-need)

Unless you're talking about the side effects?

[–] piyuv@lemmy.world 7 points 1 day ago (2 children)

4$ per dose is quite a lot of money for African countries. Not patenting it would allow them to create their own, which he blocked based on bullshit reasoning.

[–] barsoap@lemm.ee 5 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (3 children)

I did try to find unit costs for Cuba's vaccine but failed. While doing that I found a paper analysing distribution costs in Vietnam and long story short it can easily cost four bucks just to get the stuff from the plant into people's arms.

Not patenting it would allow them to create their own

Patenting it and licensing it also allows them to create their own, but now they need a plant to do that, which requires things like reliable electricity, infrastructure to enable supply of raw materials, whatnot. It's not like you can brew that kind of thing in a bathtub. What patenting also does is stop random Indian pharma producers from cooking it up and selling it to Botswana without giving you a cut, that is, the wrong private enterprise profiting off it. One that didn't incur costs doing studies so that regulators would greenlight it.

From what I gather most of the doses used overall in the world were AstraZeneca, and much of it was given to countries for free, with western countries stemming the bill, not AstraZeneca. The EU apparently (it's in your wiki link) brought the price down to €1.78 because the EU was supplying the production capacity, and €12 for Pfizer/Biontech, which was never in the race for distribution to poor countries in the first place because it requires a tight, and very cool, cooling chain. Forget about the four bucks per dose for distribution in that case.


Would this all have been better in a socialist world? Yes. But that's not what the situation on the ground was during the pandemic so stop making the perfect the enemy of the good, western countries (excluding the US) were up to the task not getting fucked over by big pharma, and passed that on to other countries.

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[–] Ledericas@lemm.ee 20 points 1 day ago (2 children)

so this is what he meant by eliminated world hunger, by killing them directly or indirectly.

[–] Zacryon@feddit.org 9 points 1 day ago (1 children)

It's logical: no people -> no hunger.

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[–] conditional_soup@lemm.ee 162 points 2 days ago (35 children)

Cool story, Bill. Who did you donate to? Why did you cut your philanthropic efforts to fight climate change and disease? Why have you and your buddies fought for minimizing and coopting government for years? Bill isn't innocent in all this, it's just a good time to blame Elon. Don't get me wrong, Elon 100% deserves it, but that doesn't mean that Bill isn't playing the PR game here.

[–] Bacano@lemmy.world 2 points 23 hours ago

Mmm yes. This is why I Lemmy. This article had so many bots praising him on Reddit. Refreshing to hear something other than boot licking

[–] Blue_Morpho@lemmy.world 140 points 2 days ago (43 children)

Why did you cut your philanthropic efforts to fight climate change and disease? Why have you and your buddies fought for minimizing

The problem is that billionaires should not exist but come on. $80 billion already donated. $7 Billion more just for Africa. Hundreds of millions in malaria research.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/carlieporterfield/2022/11/17/bill-gates-foundation-pledges-7-billion-to-support-africa-health-and-agriculture/

Could he do more? Sure. But attacking someone who is doing a little because he isn't doing more doesn't seem fair.

Years ago Elon said he was disappointed when he met Bill Gates because Gates only wanted to talk about philanthropy and climate.

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[–] thatradomguy@lemmy.world 32 points 1 day ago (6 children)

I really do think it would be fun to compile all of the billionaires in the world and just have them fight to the death in a gladiator kind of rig. Would be awesome.

[–] the_q@lemm.ee 81 points 2 days ago (55 children)

Remember there are no good billionaires. No amount of "good" they do will ever be enough.

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