One more note to add to our recent editorial about the recent meta-study published in the Lancet, reviewing a total of 65 studies from 19 different countries and concluding that natural immunity from a Covid infection is at least as effective at protecting you from reinfection with the virus as two doses of the vaccine.
That most recent review and analysis of the past studies was funded in part by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, a full-throated advocate for Covid vaccines. On the Gates Foundation website’s frequently asked questions page, the answer to the question “Does the Gates foundation believe that Covid-19 vaccination should be made mandatory?” is that the “decision is best made by individual governments. Vaccines are a powerful tool to fight disease. We’ve seen how COVID-19 vaccines have helped prevent severe illness and save lives.” In other words, the Gates Foundation isn’t quite going to endorse governments forcing people to get a vaccine they don’t want . . . but they’re not going to object to a move like that, either.
Credit the Gates Foundation for financing research that likely didn’t give them the answer they expected or preferred.
Since 2020, the Gates Foundation has been featured in outlandish conspiracy theories contending that Bill Gates was secretly trying to implant trackable microchips into everyone through the Covid vaccines. (For some reason, Melinda Gates rarely gets portrayed as the evil mastermind, indicating a terrible sexism in the tinfoil-hat-wearing community.) This new Lancet study should undermine that bizarre notion; if Gates really was that all-powerful and sinister, he wouldn’t have financed or allowed the publication of research concluding that natural immunity from past infections is at least as effective as two doses of vaccines.
Then again, considering how adamantly some people insist vaccines are the only valid form of protection from Covid-19, there’s a chance this new study will start a new conspiracy theory contending that the Gates Foundation was secretly anti-vaxxer all along.