As vaccine companies rush to bring a COVID-19 vaccine to market, billionaire Microsoft founder Bill Gates — who routinely funnels hundreds of millions of dollars to various vaccine projects — warns you will probably need “multiple doses” of any given COVID-19 vaccine for it to be effective.1
In speaking with CBS News, Gates said, “None of the vaccines at this point appear like they’ll work with a single dose,” adding that in order to wipe the virus out through universal vaccinations it will require “unbelievably big numbers” of doses. To be effective, he also predicts we will need to vaccinate around 80% of the global population so, yes, we’re talking about tens of billions of doses.
100% of Moderna Vaccine Participants Suffered Side Effects
Gates visibly struggles to maneuver through the pointed questions posed by CBS about the safety of the Moderna COVID-19 vaccine (currently known only as mRNA-1273), which was recently found2 to cause systemic side effects in 80% of Phase 1 participants receiving the 100 microgram (mcg) dose.
Side effects ranged from fatigue (80%), chills (80%), headache (60%) and myalgia or muscle pain (53%). After the second dose, 100% of participants in the 100-mcg group experienced side effects.
In the highest dosage group, which received 250 mcg, 100% of participants suffered side effects after both the first and second doses.3 Three of the 14 participants (21%) in the 250-mcg group suffered “one or more severe events.”
Despite these worrisome results, the trial is being heralded as a big success, and vaccine expert Dr. Paul Offit has been quoted4 as saying we now know “that it’s safe in 45 people,” and that “it doesn’t have a very common side effect problem.”
Clearly, we have very different perceptions of reality on what “very common” means. If 80% to 100% is considered uncommon, then just what level of harm must be inflicted in order for a vaccine to be viewed as having a questionable safety profile?
According to Gates, those side effects are largely due to the high dosages Moderna had to use in order to achieve the desired antibody levels. But, if high dosages are required to create a robust-enough immune response, and higher dosages also cause systemic side effects in a vast majority of people, just how safe will this global vaccination campaign be?
Keep in mind, the 45 participants in Moderna’s Phase 1 trial were healthy individuals between the ages of 18 and 55.5 Meanwhile, over 90% of Americans are metabolically unhealthy and struggle with chronic health conditions that can make them more prone to vaccine complications.
What’s more, frail elderly are unlikely to survive serious vaccine side effects, yet people over 80 are the most vulnerable to COVID-19 and would theoretically stand to benefit from the vaccine most.
Coronavirus Vaccines Have Been Notoriously Prone to Failure
High risk of side effects is probably to be expected, considering a) the history of coronavirus vaccines in general, b) most of the COVID-19 vaccines under development are relying on mRNA technology that have never been used in vaccine production before now, and c) the vaccines are being fast-tracked, forgoing animal studies.
Starting with the first issue, researchers have been unable to produce a coronavirus vaccine despite decades-long efforts. While SARS-CoV-2 is a novel human coronavirus, there are seven others that cause respiratory illness in humans, including four that trigger the common cold,6 which is why vaccine makers have been trying to develop coronavirus vaccines in the past.