50% of Fox Viewers Believe that Bill Gates Will Use a Covid-19 Vaccine to Plant a Microchip in Them

I really wish this was satire, but no, really; in a survey conducted last week by YouGov, 50% of Fox viewers believe that Bill Gates is planning to use a future Covid-19 vaccine to plant a microchip in them so that he can track their movements. Another 25% said they didn't have enough information to say whether this bizarre conspiracy theory was true or false. On the other hand, only 15% of regular MSNBC viewers voters believe the Gates hoax is true.

Why do right-wingers have a problem with Bill Gates? Apparently it's because he gave a "Ted Talk" in 2015 warning us that we weren't prepared for a world-wide pandemic.

Business Insider: "In his 2015 TED talk, Gates examined the ebola outbreak that killed thousands of people in Guinea, Liberia, and Sierra Leone. He highlighted the factors that kept the disease from spreading worldwide, and warned against the potential for a much more contagious, worldwide pandemic."

"The failure to prepare could allow the next epidemic to be dramatically more devastating than ebola," he said. "You can have a virus where people feel well enough while they're infectious that they get on a plane, or they go to a market."

Not exactly a novel prediction, but it was enough to start the ball rolling and once Covid-19 hit the United States, the tin-foil hat folks smelled a conspiracy.

New York Times: "That speech has resurfaced in recent weeks with 25 million new views on YouTube — but not in the way that Mr. Gates probably intended. Anti-vaccinators, members of the conspiracy group QAnon and right-wing pundits have instead seized on the video as evidence that one of the world’s richest men planned to use a pandemic to wrest control of the global health system."

Generally, no one would care about such conspiracy theories, but as we have discussed before, a vaccine will only protect us if enough people take it. The YouGov survey was not encouraging on that point.

YouGov Survey: "As a result, only half of Americans (50 percent) now say they intend to get vaccinated “if and when a coronavirus vaccine becomes available,” with nearly a quarter (23 percent) saying they won’t — a 5-point decline in the percentage of “yes” responses and a 4-point gain in the percentage of “no” responses since the previous Yahoo News/YouGov survey two weeks ago. The rest (27 percent) say they’re not sure."

The hope is that when a vaccine does become available, the Fox viewers will come to their senses, reject the nonsense and get vaccinated. It would help, of course, if by then we had elected a President who was a bit more conspiracy-adverse.

#news #coronavirus #vaccination #health

By: Don Lam & Curated Content