this post was submitted on 08 May 2025
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politics

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[–] internetistrash@lemmy.world 4 points 1 hour ago

I cannot be the only one here who sees tiny hands.

[–] SleafordMod@feddit.uk 18 points 3 hours ago (3 children)

I got downvoted on Lemmy the other day because I said that I prefer Bill Gates to Musk.

Maybe there are things about Gates I don't know. Maybe he is actually quite an evil person; I don't know. But he does at least spend billions of dollars helping vulnerable people, right? And Bill's stances on global politics are far more sensible than those of Musk.

[–] caboose2006@lemm.ee 6 points 53 minutes ago

Nuance is lost on a lot of people on here. All billionaires bad therefore no billionaire is preferred. While I agree there's no good billionaire there's a spectrum of bad. Like would I rather break my pelvis or break my legs? Both are bad but one is preferable.

[–] TronBronson@lemmy.world 13 points 3 hours ago (1 children)

I mean Gates donated his own money to help the poorest people in the world. Elon spent his money to become president so he could steal money from the poor at people in the world.

[–] IndustryStandard@lemmy.world 1 points 54 minutes ago* (last edited 31 minutes ago)

Gates donated his money to avoid taxes and start a big pharma company.

Also Bill Gates comment is about USAID an imperialistic tool which has killed many millions of children. The irony of this statement is palpable.

[–] capital_sniff@lemmy.world 0 points 3 hours ago (1 children)

Didn't some nations in Africa ask Gates to stop helping?

[–] gradual@lemmings.world 1 points 4 minutes ago

I will wager that some people from some nations asked him to stop helping based solely on the fact that we can't get millions of people to reliably agree on anything.

[–] tetranomos@awful.systems 1 points 2 hours ago

[narrator]: bill gates did not GET ReST.

[–] Ledericas@lemm.ee 15 points 9 hours ago (2 children)

so this is what he meant by eliminated world hunger, by killing them directly or indirectly.

[–] Aux@feddit.uk 3 points 3 hours ago

The only way to get rid of poverty is to get rid of the poor.

[–] Zacryon@feddit.org 4 points 4 hours ago (1 children)

It's logical: no people -> no hunger.

[–] pyre@lemmy.world 1 points 4 hours ago

and that's how you know it didn't even occur to him. he just did it for the sake of cruelty.

[–] brisk@aussie.zone 36 points 12 hours ago (6 children)

How many children died because Bill Gates lobbied for the Oxford Covid-19 vaccine to be patented?

[–] TronBronson@lemmy.world 6 points 3 hours ago

Idk how many people have died from Covid 19 vax? I keep taking it and my cock is huge, no other side effects

[–] MajesticElevator@lemmy.zip 6 points 4 hours ago (1 children)

Your claim seems a bit BS. It was apparently to have a better distribution and quality.

AstraZeneca claimed not to get profits from the vaccine sales. This seems kind of fair knowing that doses were sold at about $4 USD (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oxford%E2%80%93AstraZeneca_COVID-19_vaccine#Early_development - https://reliefweb.int/report/world/uk-donates-20-million-more-oxford-astrazeneca-vaccines-countries-need)

Unless you're talking about the side effects?

[–] piyuv@lemmy.world 2 points 3 hours ago (2 children)

4$ per dose is quite a lot of money for African countries. Not patenting it would allow them to create their own, which he blocked based on bullshit reasoning.

[–] barsoap@lemm.ee 1 points 1 hour ago* (last edited 1 hour ago) (1 children)

I did try to find unit costs for Cuba's vaccine but failed. While doing that I found a paper analysing distribution costs in Vietnam and long story short it can easily cost four bucks just to get the stuff from the plant into people's arms.

Not patenting it would allow them to create their own

Patenting it and licensing it also allows them to create their own, but now they need a plant to do that, which requires things like reliable electricity, infrastructure to enable supply of raw materials, whatnot. It's not like you can brew that kind of thing in a bathtub. What patenting also does is stop random Indian pharma producers from cooking it up and selling it to Botswana without giving you a cut, that is, the wrong private enterprise profiting off it. One that didn't incur costs doing studies so that regulators would greenlight it.

From what I gather most of the doses used overall in the world were AstraZeneca, and much of it was given to countries for free, with western countries stemming the bill, not AstraZeneca. The EU apparently (it's in your wiki link) brought the price down to €1.78 because the EU was supplying the production capacity, and €12 for Pfizer/Biontech, which was never in the race for distribution to poor countries in the first place because it requires a tight, and very cool, cooling chain. Forget about the four bucks per dose for distribution in that case.


Would this all have been better in a socialist world? Yes. But that's not what the situation on the ground was during the pandemic so stop making the perfect the enemy of the good, western countries (excluding the US) were up to the task not getting fucked over by big pharma, and passed that on to other countries.

[–] Demdaru@lemmy.world 1 points 23 minutes ago

Congrats, you've done research and thus got downvoted.<_>

[–] MajesticElevator@lemmy.zip 1 points 2 hours ago

Sadly we don't have the specifics about what increases the price, but I think it's fair to say that they probably have an automated process of creating those vaccines, and as such, idk if other labs could create a dose for less than this amount, especially if they don't have many funds. I'd argue not, but what do I know

[–] boonhet@lemm.ee 10 points 9 hours ago

Gates is always whitewashing his own future or past actions when he does something philanthropic tbh

[–] JacksonLamb@lemmy.world 18 points 12 hours ago

This. Thank you.

That was a villain level move from Gates. The behaviour of the rich nations towards the LICs over covid vaccines was absolutely shameful and destroyed the illusion of Gates' benevolence.

[–] Ledericas@lemm.ee 3 points 9 hours ago

i heard about that, he advocated for expensive equipment, medicaiton only produced by the us.

[–] thatradomguy@lemmy.world 25 points 13 hours ago (2 children)

I really do think it would be fun to compile all of the billionaires in the world and just have them fight to the death in a gladiator kind of rig. Would be awesome.

[–] Sarmyth@lemmy.world 9 points 10 hours ago (1 children)

I feel like the only way it would work is if they got to keep the money of whoever they killed as long as that person had over a billion dollars... and I would almost be OK with that.

I like to imagine it would reduce the collateral damage the rest of society faces when these people have a dick waving contest.

Roided out billionaires with their hearts exploding out their chests from experimental steroids would really mix things up in a good way. He'll maybe we'd get some truly sick cybernetic out of it too.

[–] SippyCup@feddit.nl 3 points 3 hours ago

Y...yeah .. sure. Yeah totally. The last one standing totally gets to keep everything and will absolutely be leaving the arena alive. Yup. That's how we'll do it.

[–] minkymunkey_7_7@lemmy.world 13 points 12 hours ago* (last edited 12 hours ago)

Kat and Kropp get in an argument over the war as they rest from an hour’s worth of drill (occasioned by Tjaden’s not saluting a major properly). Kat believes the war would be over if leaders gave all the participants “the same grub and the same pay,” as he says in a rhyme. Kropp believes the leaders of each country should fight each other in an arena to settle the war; the “wrong” people currently do the fighting.

Erich Maria Remarque - All Quiet on the Western Front 1929

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