False: Bill Gates's TED Talk shows that the COVID-19 vaccine was intended to kill people to combat overpopulation.

By: Christian Haag
November 25 2022

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Context

A recent documentary, "Died Suddenly," airing on the platform Rumble, features a video of Bill Gates from a TED Talk in 2010, claiming that the COVID-19 vaccine was intended to kill people to combat overpopulation. Gates says: "The world today has 6-8 billion people. That is headed up to about 9 billion. Now, if we do a really great job on new vaccines, healthcare, and reproductive health services, we could lower that by perhaps 10 or 15 percent. The film then switches to funeral director Chad Wiznat saying, "Well, common sense would tell you, if you have a man standing in front of you saying he is going to reduce the world's population by 10 or 15 percent using vaccines, what does that mean to you? It means somebody is going to die because you put a vaccine in them. It does not mean you are going to save people."

In Fact

The speech is taken from Bill Gates's TED Talk "Innovating to Zero" from 2010 but has been taken out of context. In the speech, Gates talks about how innovation and technological advancements can reduce the world's combined carbon emissions to halt the increasing temperature on earth and hinder climate change. The claim only features about 20 seconds of the 27-minute-long talk. During these 20 seconds, Gates talks about how reducing population growth, not population, can reduce the world's combined carbon emissions. He says this can be achieved through vaccines, healthcare, and reproductive health innovation. This is a subject that Gates has talked about many times and was previously reported on by Fact-check.org in 2021 when a similar claim went viral.

According to Swedish scientist Hans Rosling, the number of children per woman correlates with a child's chance of survival. By increasing the likelihood of survival in children past the age of 5, women have fewer children, and families become smaller, thus reducing population growth over time per generation. The chance of survival can be achieved by improving access to vaccines, healthcare, and reproductive health. As such, population growth can be reduced by increasing living standards. This is further discussed in Hans Rosling's book "Factfullness" where he concludes that population growth will stop when the number of births is the same as the number of deaths.

The United Nations World Population Prospects for 2022 states that population growth has already begun to slow down and predicts that the world's population will reach 10.4 billion by approximately 2100. The decline in population growth is due to declining mortality and increased life expectancy at birth. This aligns with Rosling's conclusions; after a drop in mortality, population growth will remain high while birth rates remain high. 

The Verdict

The video is misrepresented and taken out of context. Bill Gates is talking about reducing population growth, not population, with the help of vaccines, healthcare, and reproductive health. The claim that he intends to kill people using vaccines to save the environment is baseless. This claim is false.