Bill Gates is not planning to attack food supplies to create a market for bird flu vaccine

Several posts circulating on Facebook show an image of a post on X (formerly Twitter), supposedly from Bill Gates, saying “There really is no choice—bird flu jab, or die painfully”. This is accompanied by a headline “Gates Insider Admits Elite Planning to Euthanise BILLIONS via Bird Flu Vaccine”.

The image and headline come from The People’s Voice website (formerly News Punch), which has been the subject of previous fact checks by Full Fact and other fact checking organisations.

The People’s Voice article claims that Mr Gates is planning to attack the global food supply to create a market for his bird flu vaccine. But this isn’t true.

Mr Gates’ foundation, The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, has invested $52 million in German biopharmaceutical company CureVac, which is starting a study into the effectiveness of its H5N1 vaccine for bird flu. The Gates Foundation told Full Fact claims Mr Gates would attack the global food supply to “euthanise billions” are false. 

The article, when making a link between this new vaccine and its claim Mr Gates is planning to attack the global food supply to create a market for it, links to a press release from The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, describing it as a “disturbing statement on a global agreement to distribute his vaccine around the world, before the vaccine has even been approved”. 

The statement is actually about several nations committing to donate some stocks of H1N1 vaccine to the World Health Organisation. The H1N1 vaccine is for swine flu, not bird flu. And this statement was published in September 2009, not 2024. 

Full Fact has also checked Mr Gates’ X account and cannot find the tweet “There really is no choice – bird flu jab, or die painfully” on his timeline.

Mr Gates is a common subject for misinformation, particularly on the topic of vaccines. We’ve written many fact checks on false or misleading claims about him before. 

What’s happening with bird flu?

In March 2024 a person in Texas who had contact with dairy cows tested positive for bird flu. It was the second case of the H5N1 strain identified in a person in the United States following a case in Colorado in 2022.

Despite its name, bird flu is not limited to birds, and has spread to dairy cattle in a number of states in the US in recent weeks. Human infections are rare, and can cause symptoms that range from mild illness, such as upper respiratory and eye infections, to severe disease such as pneumonia that can be fatal, according to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

The CDC said “the wide geographic spread of HPAI A(H5N1) viruses in wild birds, poultry, and some other mammals, including in cows, could create additional opportunities for people to be exposed to these viruses” and that there “could be an increase in sporadic human infections resulting from bird and animal exposures, even if the risk of these viruses spreading from birds to people has not increased”. 

However it stressed “the current risk to the general public from bird flu viruses is low”. In a Preliminary Outbreak Assessment, the UK’s Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs said the “risk of entry of H5N1 virus capable of infecting domestic livestock is very low” but that the government “will continue to monitor the situation as it evolves”. 

The US government says it is developing bird flu vaccines in case they are needed for this specific strain.  

Image courtesy of Oleksandr P