Sanjeeb Phuyal is the Nepali Editor of Newschecker based in Kathmandu, Nepal. He brings over a decade of experience writing and editing news. In his previous stint, he worked as online editor for The Kathmandu Post. With the growth of social media platforms—and the ever-growing competition amongst media outlets to churn out breaking news, he feels that fact-checking every piece of information has become more essential today than ever before.
Claim
Bill Gates said that people who resist ‘mRNA’ Tsunami will be excluded from society and that a ‘Tsunami of mRNA is coming’
Fact
The Microsoft co-founder has never made such a statement, rather chief scientific officer of Moderna, Melissa J Moore once used the phrase ‘tsunami of mRNA medicines’ in her 2022 TED Talk.
A video allegedly claiming that Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates saying that people who resist the ‘mRNA Tsunami’ will be excluded from society and that a ‘Tsunami of mRNA is coming—whether you like it or not’ is going viral on TikTok.
The US billionaire has been the top target of misinformation and conspiracy theories surrounding coronavirus and vaccines. At the TED conference in Vancouver in 2015, Gates had warned that the world needed to prepare for the next major health crisis, which was seen as a forewarning of the pandemic by Gates. Against this backdrop, TikTok user @hairyfruitloop3.0 posted a video showing a fact-checked article whose title reads, “Bill Gates: People who resist mRNA Tsunami will be excluded from society.” The article carries a purported image of Bill Gates and vaccine bottles. The supposed screenshot of the post on X (formerly twitter) by the Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates reads, “A tsunami of mRNA is coming-whether you like it or not.”
The archived version of the TikTok video can be seen here.
The video posted on August 29 has garnered 1886 likes, 863 users have shared it and 897 people have commented on it until the time of publishing this article.
Newschecker found the claim to be misleading.
Fact Check /Verification
To check the authenticity of the claim made in the viral video, Newschecker first checked the alleged statement made by Bill Gates on X (formerly Twitter) that a tsunami of mRNA vaccines is coming. However, we didn’t find any such tweet on the verified Twitter account of Gates.
We also noticed that the supposed screenshot of the twitter post by Gates didn’t have a date stamp which should be visible in a genuine tweet. We didn’t find any credible news outlets reporting that Gates ever made such a statement. Thus, we could conclude that the image was fabricated and misleading.
Further, we conducted a search on google by using the key phrase ‘tsunami of mRNA Bill Gates’ the results pointed us to a TED Talk on mRNA vaccine by Moderna’s chief scientific officer Melissa J Moore. She was speaking in May 2022 about how mRNA was used in developing vaccines for COVID-19 and other diseases.
On listening to the video, we found that Moore said, “When I went on clinical trials this morning, it turns out that there are over 175 clinical trials now open using mRNA-based medicines that are recruiting patients. Another 54 clinical trials are waiting in the [wings], ready to be opened. So, there is a coming tsunami of mRNA medicines.” In the video, she says how RNA helps to maintain proteins in human bodies and maintain health and prevent disease. However, nowhere did she say that those resisting mRNA will be excluded from society.
Thus, our findings show that the video is spreading a false narrative by using fabricated content.
Conclusion
The viral video claiming that Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates said that people who resist ‘mRNA’ Tsunami will be excluded from society and that a ‘Tsunami of mRNA is coming’ is misleading.
Result: Fabricated
Sources
Bill Gates Twitter
Ted Talk/YouTube 18 May, 2022
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Sanjeeb Phuyal is the Nepali Editor of Newschecker based in Kathmandu, Nepal. He brings over a decade of experience writing and editing news. In his previous stint, he worked as online editor for The Kathmandu Post. With the growth of social media platforms—and the ever-growing competition amongst media outlets to churn out breaking news, he feels that fact-checking every piece of information has become more essential today than ever before.
