Why Bill Gates is the focus of the latest coronavirus conspiracy theories

https://www.fastcompany.com/90493469/why-bill-gates-is-the-focus-of-the-latest-coronavirus-conspiracy-theories

 Misinformation about the Microsoft founder and billionaire philanthropist is swirling around online as part of an effort to push an anti-vaccination agenda. 
 

“The Bible says there will be an Antichrist, a man that proclaims to be God, who will try to unite the world in a one-world government with a one-world financial system and establish a one-world religion,” says Pastor Adam Fannin, a controversial Florida preacher who has latched onto the anti-vaccination movement, in a recent YouTube video.

Who is this “man that proclaims to be God”? Fannin is referring to Microsoft founder and famed philanthropist Bill Gates, who has become the latest target of conspiracy theorists and anti-vaccination fringe groups.

In Fannin’s video, which has garnered 1.8 million views, he lambastes Gates for supporting vaccination and suggests that he is working on implantable devices with “digital certificates” and “quantum dot tattoos” that would identify people with COVID-19 and send their information to the United Nations. He goes on to call Gates the Antichrist. In Fannin’s other videos, he makes false claims about vaccines, including that they are “filled with filthy chemicals and aborted fetuses.”

Fannin also claims that Gates wants to use vaccination to “depopulate” the world, a myth that has been around for at least 10 years. As Snopes explains, Gates has said he sees slowing population growth as a key component of helping to lift people out of poverty—one of the goals of his philanthropic efforts. In addition to supporting new healthcare initiatives and birth control accessibility, Gates also touts mass vaccination as a way of lowering child mortality rates. He believes that as child mortality rates lower and stabilize, parents will choose to have fewer kids, because they are less worried their children will die.