FULL CLAIM: Phoebe Adele Gates is “unvaccinated, not even [for] childhood vaccines”.
REVIEW
As the COVID-19 vaccination campaign unfolded, some social media users began to claim that prominent individuals were in fact unvaccinated, as reported by Reuters and USA Today.
Claims that COVID-19 vaccine advocates or those close to them remain unvaccinated are commonly tied to vaccine skepticism and conspiracy theories aimed at sowing doubt about the safety of COVID-19 vaccines. However, such claims have proved to be inaccurate. For example, both Albert Bourla, the CEO of Pfizer, and Ugur Sahin, the CEO of BioNTech, are vaccinated, despite online claims to the contrary. Pfizer and BioNTech were two companies who made one of the currently approved COVID-19 vaccines.
Similarly, social media posts in November 2022 on Twitter and Instagram claimed that Phoebe Gates, one of the daughters of long-time vaccine advocates Bill and Melinda Gates, was “not vaccinated, not even [for] childhood vaccines”. Childhood vaccines are those recommended for children, such as the MMR (Measles, Mump and Rubeola) or DTaP (Diphtheria, Tetanus, Pertussis) vaccines.
However, this claim is baseless and has since been debunked several times. In a 2019 Facebook post about the dangers of measles, Melinda Gates stated that her three children, including Phoebe Adele, were fully vaccinated.
The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation also confirmed in emails to AFP and Associated Press that the Gates children are vaccinated against COVID-19. Phoebe Gates also stated on her personal Instagram account that she was “fully vaccinated” on 22 April 2021.
In light of these statements, and in the absence of any evidence showing otherwise, we conclude that the claim is unsupported by evidence.
