Literally the first search result LINK
This appears to be just a statement of support for “narrow” patent waviers during the pandemic. This is not the same as open licensing the Oxford vaccine and calling this “backpedaling” is misleading at best.
This isn’t Bill’s action, it’s Bill’s inaction.
If you had read the article, you would know that he very actively pressured Oxford not to open license the vaccine, leveraging his $750 million donation to the university for vaccine research.
The Gates Foundation backpedaled that stance shortly after
can you provide a source for this?
Their initial objection was over quality assurance
Who is he to decide this? He is not an epidemiologist or a public health expert or a leader of a low-resource nation or even a health professional. He’s a tech billionaire. This is exactly the problem.
Many large US companies, including pharmaceutical drug retailers, directly invest in the Gates Foundation Trust, creating a massive conflict of interest which is rarely talked about.
yeah we need every tool at our disposal fs
During the pandemic, he crippled COVID-19 vaccination efforts in the global south by pressuring Oxford not to open source their vaccine.
https://www.wired.com/story/opinion-the-world-loses-under-bill-gates-vaccine-colonialism/
We need to make major changes in our consumption to even make a dent, but I say our best shot is cold fusion and carbon capture. Those are obvious longshots.
I would argue for extensive rewilding as an alternative
While I can respect a lot of those philanthropic efforts, those should not be his decisions alone to make. That money should’ve been paid into taxes and distributed in agreed upon ways.
As a capitalist, all of his solutions are capitalist. His efforts to slow climate change are primarily technological, with a focus on unproven horseshit like carbon capture rather than proven improvements like better, less car centric urban planning and reducing meat intake. He would never even consider an strategy of economic degrowth to fight climate change even though available evidence shows that that is exactly what we need.
The sentence after where it says that… You have ctrl f. Use it.
Not sure what “evidence” you want… Bill Gates said it was true himself and did multiple interviews talking about it which are not hard to find. Every article I can find online says the same story - that Oxford initially planned to open license the vaccine and then Gates pressured them to change course.