Koronarokotteen informointi

WaPon 8 minuuttia sitten saapuneesta uutiskirjeestä Coronavirus Updates:

“I’ve heard talk that Bill Gates and others plan to put a microchip in the vaccine to track people. I have tried to find out if this is true. Is it?” —Arlene in Washington

It’s not true. Worse than that, it’s a lie being spread on social media through a deceptive video that includes a fake quote from Bill Gates, the Microsoft founder-turned-global philanthropist who has become conspiracy theorists’ latest bogeyman.

Reuters published an excellent debunking of the video a few days ago, showing exactly how the fakery was accomplished.

Basically, someone found a YouTube video from 2013 of Gates talking about the benefits of bringing digital banking systems to poor countries. “We need a measurement system that tracks the progress for drawing people in, not just to have [bank] accounts, to really benefit from financial activity,” he says at the 2:50 mark in that original video. Note that this remark has nothing to do with vaccines.

But whoever is behind the hoax spliced the word “vaccines” into the clip, so that Gates appears to say “we need a measurement system that tracks the vaccines.” The rest of the manipulated video, which spread virally on Facebook in November, consists of similarly twisted footage and lies. A short clip is shown of the executive chairman of a syringe manufacturer, talking about the possibility of putting microchips on the labels of vaccine syringes to track them when they’re shipped around the country — basically a high-tech version of a barcode on a package of gum. An anonymous, disembodied voice then claims, with no evidence, that the chip will actually be injected into people.

While the Facebook video is a relatively new and elaborate attempt to frighten people about vaccines, Reuters notes that the basic conspiracy theory has been floating around since the beginning of the pandemic. It appears to have originated with a Reddit post Gates wrote in March, in which he speculated that “eventually we will have some digital certificates to show who has recovered or been tested recently or when we have a vaccine who has received it.” (A similar topic to the Q&A in Monday’s newsletter about proving you have been vaccinated.)

Gates appears to have been correct; the New York Times reported today that state governments are being asked to report everyone who gets a vaccine to a national database, so the federal government can keep track of who needs a follow-up shot, among other reasons. But this has nothing to do with microchips, and it’s telling that the hoaxers have gone to so much effort to make Gates’s public remarks sound like science fiction.

Uutiskirjeen tilaus.
The Post’s coronavirus coverage linked in this newsletter is free to access from this email.