Why Nigerians have to take the COVID vaccine – and why I did

There’s been quite some hoopla over the pictures I shared of me taking the first dose of the COVID-19 vaccine in Dubai where I had gone to renew my business license and visa. I shared the pictures and had no misgivings about it. I do not also regret doing that and I have absolutely no apologies to anyone for doing the right thing. Of course, trust some Nigerians, especially the self-appointed internet trolls to seize a few of the pictures and display it as their own scoop. Ha! See this Tope who has been criticizing the vaccine has ‘run to Dubai’ to take his own – and probably save his own life – after deceiving people.

Let me make this clear;

1. My misgivings and doubts about the origins of COVID-19 remains very intact. In fact, this has been developed into a book with all the research put in. It will soon be available to all.

2. My misgivings about the role of Mr Bill Gates in all these remain intact. He inserted himself fully into a matter that affects everyone on the globe, so it is his liability to bear. He has some explaining to do. I have chronicled most of his engagement below for reference.

3. I have never said I will not take the vaccine. In fact, I have stated on more than 3 occasions on social media that I will take the vaccine if it comes. Some of the agitations from people like me have helped – whether we accept or not – to input some caution that could assure the vaccines harm less people. It is a fact that a global vaccine such as this will have ‘adverse effect’ on some people. Gates himself put the figure at between 700,000 to 1million. I will attach evidence of my earlier statements that I will take the vaccine (one on the 21st of December 2020 and another impliedly on the 14th of January 2021, among others). Our agitations have also helped to reduce the rigidity around the management of this disease. We all would still be holed up under our beds by now without these voices of dissent. And in holing up, many more will have died of COVID and other diseases.

4. My struggle from the beginning of this corona ‘world war’ – for that is what it is – has always been about the most-vulnerable (children, the poor, Africa, Nigeria, the common man). Most of these vulnerable groups have no voice. Many people would however prefer we simply obey what comes from abroad. There is always value in showing great caution and showing we are not ready guineapigs for anyone at all times. There is a certain classism here. Yes, we have lost some prominent people to the disease. But statistical facts show that it has not been the raging inferno that it was predicted to be, among our poorest and underprivileged. Do we destroy the livelihoods of the underprivileged and render millions of poor children illiterate because rich men are dying? This has been my cause.

5. My key reason for sharing the pictures and accompanying with an article include:

a. Transparency. I don’t see why I should take the vaccine and not let people know, especially given its novelty and given my position on the matter from day 1. People should note that most Nigerians resident in the UAE would have by now taken their shots because it is no big deal over there and is becoming compulsory except you like to be poked in the eye through your nose every 2 days. Given my writeups around it – and my promises that I will take the vaccine – I did the right thing and remain transparent and given the chance will repeat the same.

b. I needed to let Nigerians know that the world is moving on. As I stated in the accompanying article titled ADVERSE SELECTION; WHY DOES NIGERIA ALWAYS TAKE THE WRONG POLICY OPTION?, every traveler into Dubai gets tested for COVID-19 freely (we are talking of millions of free tests that we pay so much for over here), and the vaccinations are also free (for residents initially). I believe that when the UAE covers 100% of their resident population (they are close to 30% by now), even visitors will get vaccinated. This is a country ready to embrace the future. Nigeria rather prefers to remain in a dark place, with leaders choosing not to take initiative and the populace living in fear of a disease they do not understand.

c. I needed to see if we could change the narrative in Nigeria, away from doom and gloom, and daily catalogues of deaths. Every death these days gets attributed to COVID-19 and Nigerians are reminded daily that there is no cure. This is equivalent to saying the situation is hopeless. My calling is to bring hope and positivism to people. I have even had to also draw attention to the negative practice of COVID-shaming dead people. Professors Ebere Onwudiwe and Oye Ibidapo-Obe did not attend lavish parties and throw caution to the wind. Their families have made this clear. I alerted this from the beginning. Many who have died in Nigeria have been extra-cautious (Sam Nda-Isaiah, Prof. Odekunle etc). I proposed that we do more studies to know exactly what is going on and how this disease really operates, targeting who it targets, rather than embrace blind fear. A logical approach is best for these times.

d. Having stated clearly several times that we are hemmed in and so must have to take the vaccine, and that I will take it, I see no reason why I shouldn’t. What is more? Just as COVID testing is necessary for every foreign travel, so also is the vaccine becoming necessary. They said herd immunity will be achieved only when everyone takes the vaccine. Of late the ‘experts’ dropped the number to between 70% and 80% (another gain of dissenters I reckon). In the UAE every worker has to take the vaccine – or get tested every week. Some employees mandate PCR test every 2 days. The PCR test is so irritating and intrusive and most people will like to avoid it. There is now a massive rush in the UAE for the vaccine and close to 30% of the population has been vaccinated.

e. In time, no one will be able to move an inch or do any work, or even access government offices without a COVID vaccine card. No matter our misgivings, and the conspiracy theories some of which hark into the religious (666, anti-Christ and such), at some point we must have to comply. There is a time to complain and question. A few of us did that to varying degrees. There is also a time to get assurances from our governments and move on, because dithering may be even more expensive for society. That time is now. Part of my license/visa renewal in the UAE included a comprehensive health check anyway.

f. Our initial struggle to get on board other approaches apart from vaccination (the essence of my post that the idea that ONLY vaccines could work is fraudulent) did not get support especially from our urban educated who are stuck on global media news. The Madagascan serum was laughed out of existence. Hydroxychloroquin was denigrated. Ibuprofen was condemned. I even see a certain Professor Ayettey speaking about Hydrogen Peroxide (the same one that Trump was mocked about). The fact that most poor Africans are somehow coping with this thing is irrelevant data to those who preach total conformity. It’s as if Africans are not human beings. I decided to push ahead and try the vaccine; every other approach having been squelched. I have written extensively about how Africans are said not to contribute anything to the advancement of humanity. I can say I and a few others tried this time around, but again, Africa contributed nothing. Also, the atmosphere and reception, and the embrace of life and the future in the UAE gave me the needed confidence and indeed enthusiasm to take the vax. I thought I will be doing Nigerians a good by taking the vaccine and letting them know. But well, who cares?

So, my aim at this stage is to get the Nigerian government to invest in these vaccines as quickly as possible. Nigerians have to return to productivity and show that we have learnt some lessons from this experience and the lockdowns. We cannot be contemplating new lockdowns as many governors have been threatening, or even at federal level. As I have stated elsewhere, these flare-ups in the covid flu will happen every 6 months as seasons change, or every year, coinciding with the normal flu seasons. Whenever weathers get to extremes (cold or hot), the disease will flare up. This we can already extrapolate given the patterns in the last 14 odd months since this became a major issue. The normal flu kills up to 600,000 people yearly according to CDC (Centre for Disease Control). We can attribute the excess of deaths in the last year to covid. BUT we have also seen that many very sick people who died of cancer, old age etc have been written off to covid. Many have also died due to the initial fear and neglect in the medical community – especially in developing countries. I will explain how my opinions are formed shortly.

Nigeria occupies a unique position in this issue. With the largest population in Africa we have more unemployed people on our hands. If 80% of workers in the UK or US can work from home, our numbers will be less than 10%. What do we do with the rest? This is why I have virulently criticized the cut-and-paste approach of moving in lock-step with Europe and America. We are not them. It would have been great to get other approaches to defeating Covid. It would have been fantastic to see if Africa could add to the global effort, but not only did we not do much, it was obvious that that attempt was shot down from the very beginning. Even our professors of virology and epidemiology were asked to shut up and hide at home, rather than being in their laboratories. However, none of the ‘experts’ today can explain why Africans have not died in droves. It is a fact that they would rather we ignored. Some cynics still insist that millions will still die in Africa though! Should we fold our hands and be like dough in the hands of manipulators?

In global matters such as this, people must ask questions. No one should shut down dissent. The current approach of bullying and insulting anyone who questions the global approaches is counterproductive and unsustainable. It is also fraudulent. Those who ask questions have good reasons to, especially as medical experiments have been known to hurt people – largely unprotected minorities – in the past. Most people who have not been involved in research may not know this. Some of the examples include the Tuskegee Syphilis experiments where about 800 Black American men were used to test syphilis drugs in the US in the 1950s. They were infected with the syphilis virus. Half of them were given the real treatment for syphilis, while half were treated with placebos, allowing their diseases to progress even as they infected their wives. These men died miserably. There is also the Willowbrook State School experiment where mentally-challenged children were infected with hepatitis and left untreated to see the progression of the disease. Even the so-called father of modern-day gynecology, Dr J. Marion Sims, was later found to have used black women for dastardly experiments, cutting them up with abandon, and without anesthesia because he believed black people do not feel pain way back in the early 1800s. There are the Nazi experiments on Jews, the Biological Wars in North Korea where insect bombs were used to infect millions with anthrax, small pox and cholera, the use of Agent Orange, and the infection of native Americans with blankets soaked with small pox by the early American settlers. There are many medical infractions/mistrials including the Cox2 inhibitor drugs from Merck and Pfizer which caused people heart attacks, and the Northwick Park, London disaster of 2006 which involved the Leukemia medicine TGN1412. Closer home here, Pfizer was in Kano in 1996 to test Trovan, their antibiotic against cerebrospinal meningitis on children, with disastrous effect. It was Prof. Yemi Osinbajo’s firm that finally managed to extract some damages from Pfizer. More scarily, in the apartheid era they were developing a bomb that only targeted black people. The project was discontinued. We cannot all go to sleep believing we now live in an innocent era just because we all now carry gadgets. People must be allowed to speak if you want to insert something, anything in their body. Shouting people down and calling them covidiots is just arrant bullying. I hate bullies. The marketing of fear in our time is condemnable, and will even get our people to become fatalistic. Some will say ‘I am dead already from suffering, you cannot kill me a second time. I will not take the vaccine”.

So there you have it. I have performed a national service as far as I am concerned. Nigeria must invest in her future and get positioned for AFCFTA (African Continental Free Trade Agreement). I know that COVID-19 is a World War (that is how Bill Gates defined the flu pandemic which he had been warning and obsessing about since the early 2000s but why it had to choose 2020 a year of great hope and a landmark for many people is what should be investigated), but the AFCFTA is also a smaller local trade war that we cannot sleep through. Nigeria is buffeted today on all sides – drums of a civil war, problems in Oyo, soldiers joining a new Biafra struggle, kidnappings, banditry in the north, terrorism, insurgencies of all kinds. We have an economy that has tanked, with debts at an all-time high, inflation climbing with no commensurate economic growth and productivity, students sitting at home for months and another strike in the offing after barely two weeks of resumption, businesses unable to clamber back to their feet because no one is buying anything and very few people have the money anyway… All these depressing issues mean that something, somebody, has to change the rhetoric and the narrative. I am used to being a pioneer. Yes, I am a risk-taker.

I am glad to be the symbol of life and hope no matter the lampooning. I have no regrets. In another lifetime I will do things exactly the same way. Given the choice of getting a vaccine secretly, or letting Nigerians know how easy and positive it is in some countries, I choose the latter. Given the choice of imbuing hope and letting our people know this is NOT the end of life, or getting on the bandwagon to remind them how there is no cure, no hope daily, I choose the former. That is my wiring.

I admit that I do subscribe to some of the ‘conspiracy’ theories, for good reasons. For example, I concede that I fear that a vaccine may be deployed to curb populations, perhaps through some sort of sterilization. That is why I stated in my article wherein I added my pictures, that I could take the risk because I had had all the children I wanted. It is a deep issue that we must address our minds to. When I did the math, I found that Nigeria’s population of 200million will easily rise to 2.1billion in the year 2100 if left to grow at a healthy 3% year on year! So, in an article I wrote on the issue, titled “OUR POPULATION LIES ARE CATCHING UP WITH US”, I strongly advised that we come up with our own strong population policies that will not leave us vulnerable to the will and curb of these powerful countries and people, for I know they will never allow our population explode to that level. Are we sleeping through this?

WHY I SUGGEST NIGERIANS SHOULD TAKE THE VACCINE

As compelling as all the theories, and as hard as the evidences against the protagonists are, I believe we can mitigate our losses by pushing for mass importation of the vaccines by the Nigerian government. This will help us to rapidly reopen our economy, save jobs, reduce the rates of depressions, rapes, suicides, kidnappings, deaths by mismanagement of other illnesses, and avert an almost imminent outbreak of civil war. Below are the other reasons why I now feel more comfortable with the idea of a vaccine:

1. It is no longer a Gates monopoly. Initially, the man jumped in the fray as the ONLY one sponsoring all the vaccine companies. He had given money to 8 and wanted to choose two. I hate monopolies as an economist. The man made statements right at the beginning of this covid imbroglio even when WHO seemed not to know what was going on, that only a vaccine could work and he had already invested in them. It seems that power has been somewhat reduced even though he is still the biggest investor in vaccines world over.

2. Other countries like Russia, China, India, UK, France, Italy, have also joined in and some have already mainstreamed their own. So, perhaps the subterranean agenda will no longer work. But we must test whatever we bring to Nigeria.

3. Many countries like Israel (40% of population vaccinated), UAE (28%), Seychelles (14%), UK (8%) etc, have already started national immunization programs and some have indeed gone far with it. Whereas we should confirm the sources of our vaccines and do necessary checks (if we have the capability), I believe these nations are worth emulating

4. The agitations of guys like me has added value to this debate and must have also caused the key players to be cautious. Eternal vigilance is the name of the game. Trust no one entirely because no one is that trustworthy. That someone has done you some favours in the past does not mean you should rollover for them all the time to do whatever they want to you. We must retain some of our innate pride. I do not subscribe to the idea pushed by that white lady that since we cannot produce anything we are as good as dead and anyone could wipe us out so for that reason we should shut up and take the vaccines. That is not the right approach and is downright rude and evil.

INTEGRITY PROTOCOL – MY STEP-BY-STEP DECISION MAKING

So, this is how I took decisions in this instance:

1. Having seen adverts that covid vaccines were being given to residents, should I find out more or not, given that in my country there is nothing like that and only fear and bad news pervades? I am not particularly into self-preservation, but the journalist in me also kicked in. It was easy to decide in favour of finding our more.

2. Having gone online to try and book an appointment as directed and it was not working out, should I just give up and not take a taxi to the centre that was less than two kilometres to my hotel? I decided to go because I do not give up things easily. Also, it was not a bad way to spend the time. No regrets.

3. Having arrived at the venue and been told there was no need for an appointment and directed to take a seat and wait, should I have left the place? I think not. I was on a research to see how this worked, and there was an added advantage of taking the vaccination debate and how we get out of the covid quagmire forward. It was also important to be able to describe how a particular model worked fully.

4. Having been administered with the vaccine, in a seamless, almost enjoyable process of camaraderie among ‘vaccinees’ who were allowed to take pictures if they wanted, should I have informed Nigerians or kept it secret? This was the easiest decision for me to take, given my disposition to the covid issue, my promise to take a vaccine when it comes, and the need to let Nigerians know how things worked elsewhere. The idea was also to pressurize government to make the required investments in vaccines immediately, so that the country can return to some level of normalcy. Also, I needed to let Nigerians know that the vaccines were given for free. Before I left Nigeria, I knew absolutely nothing about how this worked. It was quite a novel affair. No regrets.

Unfortunately, same Nigerians chose to ‘steal’ some of the pictures and create their own narratives. My fight since covid-19 started has always been about giving our people hope when everyone said things were hopeless. The vaccine pictures I shared were part of that hope. I also expressed considerable caution in taking on board the barrage of information we have been getting from the global press for good reason. I maintain that at every point in time, given these circumstances, people must ask questions. If you want to vaccinate the world, you should expect them to ask questions. If you say a particular disease showed up on the 1st of January of a round year like 2020, around which so much hope and plans had been built, you should expect people to ask questions too. I asked questions and encouraged people to ask questions but I am no extremist. I take vaccines at every occasion demanding it – such as my trips to Ghana. I have been vaccinated against Yellow fever in Abuja as well as Kotoka Airport in recent years. My children also take all their vaccinations just as I was made to do while younger.

POLITICS AS BURDEN

Very interesting how people make it look like it is a sin to have contested for an elective position, especially the president of Nigeria. Same people who say they need better leadership try to eat those who offer themselves alive in some evil vampire orgy lol. This way, honest, decent and normal people distance themselves more and more from Nigerian politics. I saw all of this in the last election process. Even when INEC went ahead and deregistered parties in the most egregious manner, the same Nigerians that we gathered and spent money to see if we could give a new lease of life chose not to see the travesty. In fact, they hailed the action and rained abuses on us. I since signed off from Nigerian politics. It is certainly not worth it. I have also developed thick skin. We shall drive ourselves into all the troubles that we want as a people and when we get there we shall survive it. In fact, I thank the trolls and haters who have made me famous. If I was like them – fraudulent and petty – I should now launch a proper presidential quest after all they have always preferred deceivers. They have granted me notoriety. But their efforts are wasted because I absolutely have no further interest. I have been saying leading this country is like inheriting a dead pheasant (oku aparo). Ko worth e. I tried my best in 2019 and that is my contribution. The rest of my quest is intellectual.

CONCLUSION

Some folks have alleged that I am writing about what I know little about. Well, just as Gates is not a medical doctor but has become the largest investor in medicals, so also do I have a right to present facts through the prism of my discipline; economics.

John Maynard Keynes (1874 – 1938) defined an economist in the following words:

“…The master-economist must possess a rare combination of gifts. He must be a mathematician, historian, statesman, philosopher—in some degree. He must understand symbols and speak in words. He must contemplate the particular in terms of the general and touch abstract and concrete in the same flight of thought. He must study the present in the light of the past for the purposes of the future. No part of man’s nature or his institutions must lie entirely outside his regard. He must be purposeful and disinterested in a simultaneous mood; as aloof and incorruptible as an artist, yet sometimes as near to earth as a politician.”

There you have it. He said no aspect of human endeavour should be beyond our contemplation and analysis. Economics runs as a thread throughout my engagement on this covid world war. In my own quiet moments, I concluded that an Economist is someone who never stops asking questions. Like Socrates in his time, an economist understands that he can never know it all.

ADDENDUM

My romance with my friend Billy G is not over. Like Elon Musk said recently, Billy G is NOT my lover too, for now. I used to love him to pieces but as humans, we are all fallible.

TIMELINES OF MR GATES’ ENGAGEMENT WITH POPULATION AND COVID-19

February 1997 – In an interview with George Magazine, Gates respond to a question about how he separates his views from his company’s as such inter alia; “Then there’s Microsoft, a company that gets involved in very few political things. My own views are those you’d expect from somebody who feels like he’s been very, very lucky and that the resources under his command are really society’s resources. And I have to be clever about how I’m going to funnel those back in. I fund population control, I’m a very big fan of the United Way”. Another writer, a poet named Arno Karlen had written in the same edition of the magazine that “an overpopulated planet” would be “choked to extinction by a lung-attacking virus”. This quote was misattributed to Gates. See here.

March 15, 2015 – Bill Gates predicts a coronavirus and biological weapon that will kill millions. In this famous TED Talk, Gates said something about how vaccines could help reduce population. A few people have scrambled to help him interpret what he meant but the explanations are long and winding… and fuzzy. This is what he said: “The world today has 6.8 billion people. That’s headed up to about nine billion. Now, if we do a really great job on new vaccines, health care, reproductive health services, we could lower that by, perhaps, 10 or 15 percent.” Hear him here.

March 30, 2015. Bill Gates tells the world: Get ready for the next epidemic. In an article he wrote for The New England Journal of Medicine, Bill sounded a warning by referencing lessons learnt from Ebola. See here.

January 19, 2017 – BIOLOGICAL WARFARE – The deadlier alternative to nuclear warfare. “When you are thinking about things that could cause in excess of 10 million deaths, even something tragic like a nuclear weapons incident wouldn’t get to that level. So the greatest risk is from a natural epidemic or an intentionally caused infection bioterrorism events… Whether the next epidemic is unleashed by a quirk of nature or the hand of terrorists, scientists say a fast-moving airborne pathogen could kill more than 30 million people in less than a year. So the world does need to think about this”- Bill Gates, during the World Economic Forum annual meeting in Davos, Switzerland on January 19, 2017. This is an almost-verbatime repetition of an opinion or knowledge he had mentioned in his 2015 TED-Talk. See here.

February 17, 2017 – Bill Gates warns of epidemic that could kill over 30 million people – Forbes reported more vividly about Gates’ warning at the Munich security conference. These are very serious projections and dire warnings which serve as buildup to what is happening today. It is important to note that the gentleman basically divested and stacked his sweepstakes on vaccines. See here

February 18, 2017 – Bill Gates warns of tens of millions could be killed by bioterrorism. Hear him; “The next epidemic could originate on the computer screen of a terrorist intent on using genetic engineering to create a synthetic version of the smallpox virus … or a super contagious and deadly strain of the flu… Whether it occurs by a quirk of nature or at the hand of a terrorist, epidemiologists say a fast-moving airborne pathogen could kill more than 30 million people in less than a year. And they say there is a reasonable probability the world will experience such an outbreak in the next 10 to 15 years… It’s hard to get your mind around a catastrophe of that scale, but it happened not that long ago. In 1918, a particularly virulent and deadly strain of flu killed between 50 million and 100 million people. You might be wondering how real these doomsday scenarios really are. The fact that a deadly global pandemic has not occurred in recent history shouldn’t be mistaken for evidence that a deadly pandemic will not occur in the future. And even if the next pandemic isn’t on the scale of the 1918 flu, we would be wise to consider the social and economic turmoil that might ensue if something like ebola made its way into urban centres… Most of the things we need to do to protect against a naturally occurring pandemic are the same things we must prepare for an intentional biological attack… Getting ready for a global pandemic is every bit as important as nuclear deterrence and avoiding a climate catastrophe. Innovation, cooperation and careful planning can dramatically mitigate the risks presented by each of these threats.” See here.

April 27, 2018 – Bill Gates predicts pandemic at Shattuck Lecture, Massachusetts. In the simulation he showed at the lecture, a virus killed 675,000 people in 5 weeks and in his estimate, nearly 33million people will die worldwide in just 6 months. Said he: “The worst pandemic in modern history was the Spanish flu of 1918, which killed tens of millions of people. Today, with how interconnected the world is, it would spread faster”. Read from his website at here.

December 29, 2018. Gates, writing about the closing year 2018, predicts clearly and succinctly that the next pandemic will be the flu, and the world will not be prepared to handle it. See here.

October 18, 2019 – BMGF (Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation) sponsored a simulation of a Germ War’, at the Johns Hopkins University. The ideas, as has been pushed by Bill, is to simulate the devastation that a virus will cause if it became a pandemic. The virus they simulated was called ‘A New Coronavirus’. Present at the meeting were companies like Johnson and Johnson, Lufthansa, Marriot, UN Foundation, Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, UPS, China CDC, ANZ Bank, and so on. They concluded that if such a coronavirus should break out, more than 65million will die in 18 months. See here.

October 18 – 27, 2019 – World Military Games Opens in Wuhan, China, less than 300 metres from the market where the first outbreak is recorded. Some athletes from the US, and some European nations have alleged that they caught something very akin to COVID at the games. See here.

• December 31, 2019. Pneumonia of unknown cause reported to WHO China Office. This effectively screws up the entire year 2020 – a year of great hope and repositioning for billions around the world. See here.

February 15, 2020 – Gates Warns of 10 million deaths as virus spreads to Africa – The TELEGRAPH. The reportage is unclear whether 10million death will be worldwide or in Africa alone but given prediction that worldwide deaths will be at least 33million it was safe to assume Gates meant Africa alone. A year after, deaths in Africa is less than 100,000. See here.

March 18, 2020. Not missiles, microbes: Bill Gates had warned the world of an epidemic 5 years ago. The Economic Times of India reported that Gates just ‘hung up his boots by stepping down from the board of Microsoft mid-March 2020 (in the full-swing of the Covid-19 pandemic), also recalling his 2015 TED-Talk where he mentioned that growing up, his family had a barrel in the basement filled with food and drinks in preparation for a nuclear war, but that the risk of a global catastrophe had changed from a nuclear war to a biological one. Said Gates “If anything kills over 10 million people in the next few decades it’s highly likely to be a highly-infectious virus rather than a war. Not missiles, microbes’. He gave example of the 1918 Spanish flu, as a virus that could spread through the air. It is important to note that for months in the beginning of the covid-19 pandemic even the World Health Organisation claimed not to be sure if it is airborne. The confusion and misinformation, uncertainties, and some would say deliberate obfuscation were probably instruments to make the war more devastating. See here.

March 24, 2020 – Bill Gates says we can’t restart the economy soon and simply ‘ignore that pile of bodies over in the corner’ – Vox. In the very beginning of the lockdowns, Gates uses this powerful analogy to ram home the horror of his predictions. His wife also quoted an erroneous video of Guayaquil, Ecuador, where according to her, they already had trouble finding where to bury their dead. At that time she spoke, less than 400 people had died of COVID -19 in that country. Also, there hasn’t been anywhere in the world where there are piles of bodies on street corners contrary to the predictions and imaginations of the Gates family. See here.

April 3, 2020 – The Interview: Bill Gates. In this interview with Trevor Noah, Gates lays out the gloom ahead for the world for the next 48 months. See here.

April 8, 2020 – Bill Gates: This is how long it may take before Americans ‘can be completely safe’ from COVID-19 – CNBC. Here, Gates magisterially states what is likely to happen in the future. The interesting thing about his rhetoric is how Africa is always left in the cold. He says the US should lock out anyone who does not present a covid certificate of sorts and that African countries may have to wait until all others get vaccinated and when richer nations can finance vaccines for them. See here.

April 10, 2020 – Bill Gates warns that a coronavirus-like outbreak will probably happen ‘every 20 years or so’- Futurism.com. Here, it seems Bill is trying to book timeshare into the future. Said he: “OK, there really is a meaningful probability every 20 years or so with lots of world travel that one of these [viruses] will come along.” See here.

April 10, 2020 – Melinda Gates says millions will die in Africa and there will be no spaces to bury people – CNN. See here.

April 23, 2020 – Bill Gates states that the world must do advanced testing, contract tracing and vaccines in order to stop the virus – CNBC. He pushed for self-isolation and the possibility of self-testing at home. He said most developed countries will enter second phase of pandemic in the next two months See here.

April 20, 2020 – Coronavirus will cost far more than $3 Trillion – Gates – The Africa Report. As at January 2021, it has cost the world over $25 trillion in economic decline. See here.

April 23, 2020 – Bill Gates explains why most sports will be gone a lot longer than fans realise – The Insider. Here, he digs in that large gatherings, such as for sports or concerts, should not be allowed for 48 months. See here.

April 23, 2020 – Bill Gates on life after lockdown, and what it will really take to defeat ‘the first modern pandemic’ – Geekwire. Mr Gates again dictates how the world will operate in this article quoted by this newspaper. Says he: “Picture restaurants that only seat people at every other table, and airplanes where every middle seat is empty… Schools are open, but you can’t fill a stadium with 70,000 people… Short of a miracle treatment, which we can’t count on, the only way to return the world to where it was before COVID showed up is a highly effective vaccine that prevents the disease… Unfortunately, the typical development time for a vaccine against a new disease is over 5 years”. See here.

April 25, 2020 – We are not even halfway through the Covid-19 pandemic, says Bill Gates. Bill sets the pace, as he has an uncanny knowledge of the beginning and the end. Some of what he said in this interview include; “It’s going to be a while before things go back to normal… I wish we could say we are halfway through. But I don’t think so. No one knows in advance which vaccine approach will work, so a number of them need to be funded so they can advance at full speed. Many of the vaccine approaches will fail because they wont generate a strong enough immune response to provide protection. Scientists will get a sense of this within 3 months of testing a given vaccine in humans by looking at the antibody generation

April 27, 2018. Bill Gates thinks a coming disease could kill 30 million people within 6 months – and says we should prepare for it as we do for war – Business Insider. One bizarre thing to note is that Gates keeps predicting pandemics every year, at every opportunity. See here.

April 30, 2020 – The race for a COVID-19 vaccine, explained – Gates. In this video, the Microsoft founder displays incredible knowledge as usual, about the different approaches to vaccine development and explains briefly the concept behind the RNA vaccines.. See here.

July 12, 2020 – Bill Gates warns that COVID-19 could turn into ‘deadlier pandemic’- Newsbytesapp. He speaks about the need to consider poor countries whom he projected would be worse hit.. See here.

July 28, 2020 – Bill Gates says there could be a ‘substantial’ reduction in coronavirus death rate by end of 2020 – CNBC. When there’s a slowdown in new infections, even he panics and makes a positive prediction, only to go down south when infections pick up. See here.

August 18, 2020. The coronavirus pandemic will be over by the end of 2021. But millions more are to die in poor countries – Gates. – CNBC See here.

September 21, 2020 – “Bill Gates: The end of the pandemic, best case, is probably 2022” – CNN. Sometimes the predictions are just a huge game of yo-yo. But this statement hacks back to the beginning of the pandemic where lockdowns were meant to last for 4 years in some parts of the world. See here.

September 21, 2020 – When Bill Gates think we’ll have a covid-19 vaccine – and why that won’t be the end of the pandemic – Fortune Magazine. Here, Bill is again choreographing the narrative; the narrative of hopelessness and helplessness. The world was told that all we needed was a vaccine, but the big man now says it will not end the pandemic. Why? See here.

September 22, 2020 – Bill Gates says he thinks Trump’s travel ban made outbreak in the US worse. Here’s why – CNN. Here, Gates speaks about how Trump’s early travel ban sparked panic travel into the US. See here.

September 23, 2020 – Work from home culture to continue after pandemic ends: Bill Gates – Economic Times India. Another strong opinion about the way the world should operate, but many surveys carried out across the world however show that most people actually want to return to the office environment. A World Street Journal article, among many others shows that on-site work is best for building organizational culture, mentoring, hiring and developing new employees, among other benefits. See here.

October 15, 2020 – Bill Gates: Fall will be ‘worse than the summer’ – Fox Business. Again, Gates displays uncanny ability to predict the future with much confidence – even though he has usually missed the mark. See here.

November 18, 2020 – Bill Gates says more than 50% of business travel will disappear in post-pandemic coronavirus world – CNBC. See here.

December 14, 2020 – Next four to six months could be worst of COVID-19 pandemic, says Bill Gates. Hear him; “Sadly, the next four to six months could be the worst of the pandemic. The IHME (Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation) (which he founded) forecast shows over 200,000 additional deaths. If we would follow the rules, in terms of wearing masks and not mixing, we could avoid a large percentage of those deaths…Overall, when I did the forecasts in 2015, I talked about the deaths potentially being higher. So, this virus could be more fatal than it is. We didn’t get the worst-case. But the thing that has surprised me is that the economic impact in the U.S. and around the world has been much greater than the forecasts that I made five years ago,” he said on CNN. See here.

October 11, 2020 – Bill Gates says Trump’s Coronavirus treatment won’t work for everyone, shouldn’t be called cure – Fox Business. With this statement, some feel Gates rushes to do everything to take away hope wherever it sprouts. See here.

December 19, 2020 – Bill Gates says he has bad news for those who feel optimistic about the arrival of a covid-119 vaccine – Marketwatch. Says he “Sadly, the next four to six months could be the worst of the pandemic. The IHME forecast shows over 200,000 additional deaths. If we would follow the rules, in terms of wearing masks and not mixing, we could avoid a large percentage of those deaths…Even through early 2022, unless we help other countries get rid of this disease and we get high vaccinations rates in our country, the risk of reintroduction will be there… And, of course, the global economy will be slowed down, which hurts America’s economy in a pretty dramatic way” See here.

December 22, 2020 – These breakthroughs will make 2021 better than 2020 – GatesNotes. In this ‘Year in Review’ blog, Gates acknowledges he was wrong about Africa and attributes the reason for low fatalities there to the youth demographic, rural dwelling, and lax monitoring. He acknowledges too, that the focus on COVID-19 may have left African populations vulnerable to other diseases (something I had warned about early, including the devastating economic effects of lockdowns in poor countries). He also proposes new test protocols. According to him, COVID-19 ranks 31 in the list of deadly diseases in Africa. 31st! See here.

January 17, 2021 – Microsoft Founder Bill Gates is Biggest Farmland Owner in the US – Forbes. As much as he hides away in bunkers, afraid of viruses and human beings, Gates’ money continues to work for him. He has acquired 242,000 acres of land in the US cities of Louisiana, Nebraska and Arkansas.. a strategy is at play. The lockdowns caused a heavy dependence by much of the world on technology, to survive and communicate. Elon Musk had his fortunes rise by a factor of three. Ditto Jeff Bezos. The winners and losers have emerged and none of them is in Africa. The subtle injustice of covid-19 and the ‘new normal’, on the most vulnerable is now more evident. There seems to be so much money – and land – on the table as the poor are locked-in and left hopeless, gasping for breath and fearful for the future. The smart Alecs are picking these things up. In a short while, they could be buying up whole countries and evacuating the people. See here.