VICE News shilling for Bill Gates - Debunking the Bill Gates ’Microchip’ Conspiracy

Video Transcript:

Bill Gates has been a conspiracy theory villain for a long time. Land grabs, population control, but a new tall tale spiked with the pandemic, one that 44% of Republicans believed that he would use the vaccine roll out to mass implant Americans with microchips to track their movements. Which is, let's be clear, not true. But like most conspiracy theories, the story didn't just come from nowhere. A lot of misinformation contains a tiny grain of truth, but it's taking completely out of context and then weaponized to forge kind of alternative narratives that are not true. In this case, that grain of truth is the size of a teeny tiny needle-injected dot. It came from a study, a MIT study, that was looking at quantum dot tattoo systems, a study that was theoretical. The study showed that a patch of micro needles could be used to inject both a vaccine and a special die, invisible to the naked eye, but able to hold vaccine records for, say, refugee kids who may not have paper copies. The study was funded in part by the Gates Foundation, and once people got hold of that info, a whole new story formed. It was worth taking completely out of context, to create this narrative about population control and microchips, and this is all part of a grand plan. The conspiracy hinges on the word tracking. This injectable die had been designed to keep track of medical records, not to geolocate children. This particular conspiracy theory kind of falls at the nexus of these institutions that are super distrusted, like not only big tech, as far as Bill Gates is concerned, but then also the medical institution, which, you know, for any number of reasons, people aren't necessarily that pumped about. They all piggyback off each other, and that's what makes them also problematic, because it's not, you know, we can't just pigeonhole them into one particular community, because all these narratives are shifting, and there's tons of overlap. Just to be completely certain about the vaccine microchip theory, we checked with someone who definitely knows. Dr. Rose, first question, are there microchips in the COVID vaccines? Is the blunt answer is no. There are no microchips in the vaccine. There's nothing but, you know, vaccine and a little bit of a chemical to make sure that you have an appropriate response to the vaccine in the vaccine. How do you know there aren't microchips in the vaccines? On a fundamental level, the smallest computer right now is about a half millimeter to a millimeter in diameter, not the size of a grain of sand. Even if you could take the world's smallest computer, it's not going to get through the needle, it's not going to get into you, and you would see it in solution in the clear fluid that comes with the vaccine. But 39% of people still feel at least a little anxious about taking the vaccine. When we operate in kind of ecosystems of extreme uncertainty, we will grasp onto anything, whether it's true or false, to make sense of a situation. Is there any onist then on the medical community itself to better communicate, to fill that knowledge gap that you're talking about? Onist not necessarily in the medical community, but we need to rethink ways of communicating information. I'd say vaccination communities and a lot of these conspiracy theory communities are networks and they're participatory and they're top down, they're bottom up, and they know it laterally. But there needs to be more kind of civic engagement, more community engagement, because that's the only way we can actually, you know, essentially compete with these other communities that are very active and very networked and very motivated. We dismissed conspiracy theories as just whacking crazy, but they do resonate with communities, and we have to understand the reasons why they resonate with people, is because as a crisis situation, people confused, people are scared, people don't have access to good information. You literally from the inside of your DNA don't know why you're complying. That's why the vaccination is actually the mark of the meeting. And in order to address that, to create some sense of power and control, they will shape these narratives that give them the idea that they're in control that they are safe somehow. And anyway, there's lots of stuff you should be afraid of. Microchips? No. And why are you even talking about this? Because if you have a phone or a computer, it's likely lots of companies have your data in there showing it all the time. The