Lhe World Economic Forum in Davos (Switzerland) is a sounding board for the obsessions of the business world and a reflection of its versatility. In 2022, the Covid-19 pandemic crushed all subjects – tests and masks were obligatory. On this Monday, January 15, not a single mask on the horizon and no need for a certificate. Even Ukraine is fading from conversations and the most beautiful house on the promenade, the main artery of the city, has been renamed “AI House”the “house of artificial intelligence”.
Ordinary flu deaths went under the radar and tons of brand new vaccines were thrown into the trash. Bill Gates, whose foundation devotes the majority of its resources to vaccinating poor countries, knows that he is no longer the prophet of new times. The epidemic will return one day, but for now, the planet is looking elsewhere.
This does not prevent the co-founder of Microsoft from continuing to spend his immense fortune in the fight he has been waging for more than twenty years at the head of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. It even adds more since the world’s richest foundation announced on Monday that its budget would be further increased for 2024, to 8.6 billion dollars (7.8 billion euros), an increase of 30% compared to to 2021. It far exceeds the 6.7 billion from the World Health Organization, although sponsored by its 194 members.
Unchanged mantra
In Davos, he is active on the theme of the future of health, just to remind the bosses present that, for a large part of Earthlings, vaccination is still a matter of life or death. And the wise businessman that Bill Gates has remained can reap the rewards of his investment. Friday January 12, we learned that Cape Verde had become the third country in Africa to have eradicated malaria.
As for poliomyelitis, which paralyzed 350,000 children per year in 2000, it will only affect 12 in 2023. The billionaire’s mantra has not changed: with simple and inexpensive technologies, we obtain spectacular results, whether in the fight against diarrhea, postpartum hemorrhages in Africa or the vaccination of little girls against the papillomavirus.
This does not prevent Bill Gates from being hated by many angry people who attribute all the conspiracies to him, undoubtedly preferring that fortunes be dispersed in boat races, master paintings or dreams of the planet Mars. For others, he embodies a form of good conscience proving that amassed fortunes can sometimes help the most fragile part of humanity.