Bill Gates says it will take Latin America six to 12 months longer than the U.S. to control COVID-19 | Opinion

In an interview about his latest book and several other pressing issues, Bill Gates sounded especially concerned when I asked him about the slow pace of COVID-19 vaccination in Latin America and other parts of the developing world.

The Microsoft founder and mega-philanthropist, whose Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation has donated more than $1 billion to help combat the coronavirus pandemic especially in developing countries, told me that in the best case scenario the vaccines will control the virus in Latin America six months after the United States. But he cautioned that the delay could be much longer, perhaps of up to 12 months.

If things go well with the AstraZeneca, Johnson & Johnson and Novavax vaccines, “the inequity will be about a six-month” delay. “If things don’t go well with those vaccines, it could be nine to twelve months,” he said.

Gates lamented that, under the Trump administration, the United States failed to support the World Health Organization’s COVAX global vaccination program to help developing countries get 2 billion COVID-19 vaccines by the end of this year.

While president, Donald Trump withdrew from the WHO, and did not contribute funds for the COVAX program. His measures were strongly criticized by the scientific community, because you can’t defeat a pandemic if the rest of the world gets infected.

In addition, “the previous administration said that every American should have a vaccine before a single vaccine gets out of the country, which, you know, I don’t agree with,” Gates told me.

Fortunately, the Biden administration’s $900 billion COVID relief package includes $4 billion for the COVAX initiative, and “we encourage the Congress to finally show up to help the global effort,” Gates said. He added that “the Biden administration is very engaged in saying no, it’s not just America.”

When I asked Gates who he thinks is behind the crazy conspiracy theories claiming that he is planting chips in COVID-19 vaccines to control people’s minds, he conceded that he is “surprised about the volume” of these false claims circulating about him and National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases director Anthony Fauci.

“It’s kind of ironic that when you are trying, when you are giving money away and saving lives, the conspiracy theory says that you are trying to make money, or that you are trying to actually reduce the population,” he said.

Perhaps it’s because “during a tough pandemic, people will reach over-simplistic explanations and trying to say, ‘OK, there’s some evil force here,’ ” he added. “And it’s, of course, fanned by the ability to communicate digitally. I’m hopeful that as people see the vaccine getting out and that the death rates are coming down, the truth is accepted broadly.”

The interview with Gates centered mostly on his new book, “How to avoid a climate disaster: The solutions we have and the breakthroughs we need.” I will share with you what he told me about this in my next column.

But going back to the delays in bringing COVID-19 vaccines to Latin America and other regions, Gates should be applauded for drawing world attention on this. Unless rich countries step up efforts to get vaccines to countries such as Brazil and Mexico — which alongside the United States have the world’s highest numbers of coronavirus deaths — we won’t defeat the pandemic.

Just after my interview with Gates, new statistics about the vaccine rollout inequities underscored the severity of the problem.

While Israel had administered 76 doses of COVID-19 vaccines per 100 people by Feb. 16, and the United States 16, the vaccination rate in Latin America — with the exception of Chile — is dismal. By that date, Brazil had given out only 2.5 vaccines per 100 people, Argentina 1.4, Mexico 0.6, and Peru 0.2 per 100 people, according to Oxford University’s Ourwoldindata.org website.

Gates is right. Unless we move fast to provide funds for the COVAX global vaccination effort, the world will be much more unsafe for everybody, including for Americans.

Don’t miss the “Oppenheimer Presenta” TV show at 8 p.m. E.T. Sunday on CNN en Español. Twitter: @oppenheimera

This story was originally published February 17, 2021 at 2:27 PM.