Bill Gates, the co-founder of Microsoft turned philanthropist, announced on Wednesday that he will remove himself from the list of the world’s wealthiest people by donating “virtually all of his wealth” to the Gates Foundation.
In layman’s terms, he is donating $20 billion to himself.
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In 2010, Bill Gates promised to donate all of his wealth, but since then, his fortune has more than doubled, according to BBC.
In a long Twitter thread, Bill Gates detailed his thoughts on a variety of topics, including pandemic prevention, gender equality and women’s health, and climate change.
“Several huge global setbacks over the past few years have left many people discouraged and wondering whether the world is destined to get worse,” Gates wrote on Twitter.
“The pandemic is one of the biggest setbacks in history. The war on Ukraine is a gigantic tragedy for the entire world. The damage from climate change is already worse than most models predicted. The U.S. has taken a huge step backwards for gender equality and women’s health,” he added.
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Gates said that he is still hopeful that these setbacks will be mitigated and we can “get back to the progress the world was making.”
By 2026, Gates intends to raise the amount spent on his foundation from $6 billion to $9 billion each year.
With the support and guidance of our board, we plan to increase our spending from nearly $6 billion per year today to $9 billion per year by 2026. To help make this spending increase possible, I am transferring $20 billion to the foundation’s endowment this month. pic.twitter.com/ybLMAKPx7I
— Bill Gates (@BillGates) July 13, 2022
Gates also made it clear that the CEO of Berkshire Hathaway Warren Buffett was an equal contributor to the organization. He also tweeted that he plans to give away all of his wealth to the foundation in the future, a move that will remove him from the list of the world’s richest people.
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As I look to the future, I plan to give virtually all of my wealth to the foundation. I will move down and eventually off of the list of the world’s richest people.
— Bill Gates (@BillGates) July 13, 2022
“I have an obligation to return my resources to society in ways that have the greatest impact for reducing suffering and improving lives. And I hope others in positions of great wealth and privilege will step up in this moment too,” Gates said.
Additionally, Gates noted that his foundation’s efforts have contributed to the “prevention of pandemics, reducing childhood deaths, eradicating diseases, improving food security and climate adaptation, achieving gender equality, and improving educational outcomes.”
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I am very proud of the foundation’s role in helping solve big problems like preventing pandemics, reducing childhood deaths, eradicating diseases, improving food security and climate adaptation, achieving gender equality, and improving educational outcomes.https://t.co/D8rJrdoPOE
— Bill Gates (@BillGates) July 13, 2022
In terms of food security, back in 2018, the Gates Foundation partnered with DFID to fund research into “super-crops” and livestock. These crops are “more nutritious, more resistant to disease and better able to withstand severe floods,” according to the news release.
He said during the interview, that he is helping the animals to survive either by having “vaccines or better genetics.”
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Watch below:
In terms of the pandemic, Gates reiterated that the only way to prevent the pandemic from happening again is to “vaccinate the world in six months” with the help of his team called the GERM—Global Epidemic Response and Mobilization.
If we had stopped the COVID pandemic in less than 100 days, we could’ve saved over 98% of the lives lost. Here’s how we can prevent it from happening again: https://t.co/qsZHVFUi6d pic.twitter.com/iMQNjqcZur
— Bill Gates (@BillGates) July 14, 2022
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“Here’s how a GERM response would work: The team’s disease monitoring experts would look for potential outbreaks. Once it spots one, GERM should have the ability to declare an outbreak and work with national governments and the World Bank to raise money for the response very quickly. Product-development experts would advise governments and companies on the highest-priority drugs and vaccines,” Gates said in a statement.
On Thursday, Gateway Pundit reported that the Gates-funded organization Global Alliance for Vaccines and Immunization (GAVI) identified 11 viruses that have the potential to cause the “next pandemic.”
“The COVID-19 pandemic wasn’t the first to devastate the world and it won’t be the last. In a new series, we round up emerging infectious threats that have the potential to erupt into global pandemics,” the organization wrote on its website.
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Source material can be found at this site.
