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Bill Gates is a public health expert. He has been working on these problems with some of the smartest minds in the field for decades now. How long does someone

by mdoms 6y ago

Bill Gates is a public health expert. He has been working on these problems with some of the smartest minds in the field for decades now. How long does someone need to be working on a problem before they're worthy of being a "go to source", in your opinion?

codebolt 6y ago
Like it or not, he's become a highly controversial figure for a large fraction of the population, particularly within the societies that his foundation works. In my opinion, they'd do good to pick a figure whose name is less tarnished if they want the message to be more broadly accepted.
- creato 6y ago
  No matter who you put forth saying what Gates has been saying, they will quickly be tarnished by the same baseless bullshit. Effectively 0% of people knew who Facui or Birx were before the pandemic. Now they're the target of the same kind of controversy.
  - prox 6y ago
    It’s the same mechanism over and over. If I say something on a blog or newspaper like : “user Creato makes apps that make people dumber” It is you who have to go on the defensive, especially if it gets spread far and wide, regardless if it is true or not. But the lie is out there and your truth has to catch up.
  - social_quotient 6y ago
    Maybe zero young people but I’d say well informed middle age and up would know who Facui is. It’s hard to debate this with a source but these people have even in the news for decades when things go wrong. I disagree with the “effective 0%”
    - dgfitz 6y ago
      I’m a allegedly well-educated well-over-30s person, didn’t know who either of them were.
    - reillyse 6y ago
      Here is the google trends data from Fauci. https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=today%205-y&geo=US&q=Anthony%20Fauci https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=today%205-y&ge...
    - social_quotient 6y ago
      Gosh down votes for this Okay let me try to show my side of “0%“ is wrong” “author, coauthor, or editor of more than 1,300 scientific publications, including several textbooks.“ “Dr. Fauci ranked 7th out of more than 1.8 million authors in the field of immunology by total citation count between 1980 and January 2020.” Note this isn’t just 2020. It’s a long history. “Dr. Fauci was appointed director of NIAID in 1984.” And has served under 6 presidents. Most of which had more than 1 term. If you are looking for a long list of awards and honorary doctorates head over to his Wikipedia page. To the replies I got - I don’t consider 30’s middle aged. I guess I was thinking if you were around with AIDS news in the 80’s you might remember him. Oxford dictionary considers middled aged 45-65 - google trending searches isn’t how I would evaluate the history of someone over decades of time. For fun I did fin a bunch of videos of times he was on TV via YouTube. So again my point is that 0% is far from right.
  - jMyles 6y ago
    Effectively 0% of people knew Anthony Fauci?
  - matwood 6y ago
    I think if someone was gay and or dealt with HIV in some form, they likely heard of Dr Fauci. Researchers definitely know who is. From his CDC bio: “In a 2020 analysis of Google Scholar citations, Dr. Fauci ranked as the 41st most highly cited researcher of all time. According to the Web of Science, Dr. Fauci ranked 7th out of more than 1.8 million authors in the field of immunology by total citation count between 1980 and January 2020.”
    - sukilot 6y ago
      Right, that's no one, statistically speaking. In particular, the people calling for Fauci's family to be harmed are not in the group you mentioned.
- Vinnl 6y ago
  But Gates is controversial because of the work he did that make him a qualified source, so it's not unlikely that any reasonable alternative would also have their name "tarnished".
- asalahli 6y ago
  That's an interesting claim. Pretty much every piece of negative opinion of Gates I've seen have either been 1. About his work at Microsoft 2. Or some conspiracy theory about world domination, population control etc I'd be interested to read more on how societies he's directly worked with think of him, if you have any links
  - throwaway12992 6y ago
    It has to do with Gates' vaccine program in India. Here is a paper you can read. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/30111741/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/30111741/
    - throwaway12992 6y ago
      Not a paper, but perhaps worth reading, is this article, which discusses other conflict of interest accusations. https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/industry/healthcare/biotech/healthcare/controversial-vaccine-studies-why-is-bill-melinda-gates-foundation-under-fire-from-critics-in-india/articleshow/41280050.cms https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/industry/healthcare/bio...
      - darawk 6y ago
        The point of this article appears to be that the Gates foundation simultaneously promotes vaccination and helps pharmaceutical companies with their vaccine research. While that is technically a conflict of interest...it's not much of one. They do both of those things vaccines because vaccines save millions of lives per year. It'd be like saying it's a conflict of interest to promote access to clean water, while also investing in companies that supply clean water. Sure. It's a conflict. It's also exactly what you would do if you just wanted people to have clean water.
    - deleted 6y ago
      [deleted]
  - schemy 6y ago
    I'm not interested in digging up the information on this because it was over 10 years ago, so take it with a huge grain of salt. He had this huge presentation about a laser zapping mosquitoes. The patent was fed to a patent troll, the whole board was stacked with his friends, the company produced nothing and was set up to sue anyone who did try and produce anything. 10 years later they still haven't produced more than the one prototype. The 'charitable' donations were literally just tax write offs that paid for his friends salary. Since then I really don't take him seriously at all. His charities are just a way to reduce his tax bill and look like he cares, while he's just paying his friends to work on projects they find interesting regardless of the chance of success. In short: hubris, corruption, white collar rico and tax evasion.
- fanatic2pope 6y ago
  Makes no difference. Ohio had Amy Acton, a medical doctor who specialized in public health. She did a great job but the right wing nutcases still sent her and her family death threats to the point where she was forced to resign.
- Nursie 6y ago
  So... do you keep picking new spokespeople when each one becomes unreasonably tarnished? Because each and every person who promotes public health and (particularly) vaccination, eventually has so much baseless shit thrown at them that they become 'tarnished' before long. Or should we try to make some sort of stand, and let the wingnuts know their opinions don't matter? We see the effects of this sort of compromise in the vaccine space - perfectly safe additives were removed in an effort to assuage fears, but that action was twisted into a victory by antivax campaigners - "see, we were right, it was harmful, they lied, we forced them to remove it". (Gates is tarnished in my eyes for computer industry reasons, but I have no issue with his record in public health)
- tptacek 6y ago
  So, the Heckler's Veto, then?
goldforever 6y ago
"Bill Gates is a public health expert." - WRONG
AmericanChopper 6y ago
Bill Gates certainly doesn’t have the credentials of a public health expert. His work with health experts has extended to funding and choosing what problems to solve. You’d presume he’s learned a fair amount about it over the years. But I’ve learned a fair amount about accountancy through my years of working with corporate accountants. I’m definitely not an accountancy expert though. What qualifications do you imagine he has? What significant work do you believe he has personally contributed to?
- ipsum2 6y ago
  If your full time job is to lead corporate accountants / head a large corporate accountancy firm and you've done it for several years, I'd consider you an accountancy expert.
  - AmericanChopper 6y ago
    I guess that makes the guy who manages my software engineering team a software engineering expert too? As far as I can tell, the person who actually leads the Gates Foundation health division is Trevor Mundel. Even then, the work of the Gates Foundation has been in funding projects lead by other organisations, rather than in implementing those projects themselves.
    - ipsum2 6y ago
      > I guess that makes the guy who manages my software engineering team a software engineering expert too? If they do it very well and can point to measurable results of success, I would think so!
      - AmericanChopper 6y ago
        So if an engineering team is successful, then their manager is necessarily an engineering expert? You’re really not providing any rationale to support this rather extreme position. Bill Gates experience in the field of public health is choosing projects to finance, and even then he is not the primary person responsible for that in his foundation. Bill Gates has no credentials you could point to, and has done no work you could point to, that would support an assertion of him being a public health expert. It is frankly a ridiculous proposition.
sukilot 6y ago
Why do we want to hear from Fauci instead of Trump? Why get information thirdhand from the money guy?
- blhack 6y ago
  Because he isn't just the money guy.
- whynotminot 6y ago
  I mean but you can take this even further using your logic: Why even listen to Dr. Fauci, then? Is Fauci at Moderna right now actually making the vaccine? Get me the lab tech running the tests and I'll settle for nothing less!
3131s 6y ago
It doesn't matter how long. The "go-to" source should have integrity, along with no financial stake in the issues at hand.
- bostonvaulter2 6y ago
  I would argue that "no financial stake" is not a good metric because basically all experts have a financial stake in their area of expertise.
- frandroid 6y ago
  A financial stake is usually about making a profit. The Gates Foundation is not going to make any profit here, it's looking at funding vaccines at super low cost and giving them away or the manufacturer selling them for as little as possible to governments who would give them away. I hated Gates the monopolist and the foundation has messed up on a few questions (see: efforts in Education), but how in hell can you say that it has a financial stake? If anything, the most successful people are at finding a solution, the more he's going to deplete the coffers of the Foundation, as a vaccine manufacturing force multiplier.
blub 6y ago
Goes to show that with enough money and effort one can not only clean up their tarnished image, but also become a public authority.
harry8 6y ago
Well anyone who has extensively published novel research that has altered best practise in the field for the better and has a track record of being sensible, well-reasoned, logical, has an understanding of how humans organise not just the natural world and has wonderful command of spoken and written expression would be near the top of the wish-list. It's not how long it took that person to demonstrate this. It's that Gates kinda hasn't really done it. He's far from terrible but he gets pretty low scores on most of those attributes. He's not going to be listened to if he didn't bring the money. His experience in making microsoft a juggernaut in the 80s and 90s is not super-relevant here but that's why he's being held up as an "authority." That position of authority is one he seems very happy to hold and use as a pulpit. Is it deserved at all? Maybe it is. He did bring the money to a lot of programs and I believe he is even bankrolling the WHO nowadays (worthwhile after their multiple screwups that continue? I don't know. Maybe it is and a vital service he's performed there). Gates an expert? Hmm. Don't think he's really demonstrated that conclusively. He'd use his position to get advice from one or more, one would think. To be clear. More power to him giving his vast wealth away to try and make the world better in tangible ways. You can't possibly spend more than $100m in your life on consumption even if you're totally nuts. Go for immortality. Do it in a way that's kinda good. Go Bill! I pray your good intentions don't pave a road you don't want built as I do everyone's good intentions, including my own.
- cma 6y ago
  > but that's why he's being held up as an "authority." Look at his prepandemic warnings of a pandemic and how it would play out. And real money and action in trying to prevent it. That's why he is being held up as an authority.
- netsharc 6y ago
  Presumably Bill Gates was a good manager and CEO, he became the richest man in the world by running a very successful software company. And in his current field of "global health" he hopefully has as good of a grasp of the issues, the proposed solutions, and since he's a smart man he's hopefully able to separate the bullshit from the effective solutions.

by mdoms 6y ago

codebolt 6y ago

Like it or not, he's become a highly controversial figure for a large fraction of the population, particularly within the societies that his foundation works. In my opinion, they'd do good to pick a figure whose name is less tarnished if they want the message to be more broadly accepted.

creato 6y ago
No matter who you put forth saying what Gates has been saying, they will quickly be tarnished by the same baseless bullshit. Effectively 0% of people knew who Facui or Birx were before the pandemic. Now they're the target of the same kind of controversy.
- prox 6y ago
  It’s the same mechanism over and over. If I say something on a blog or newspaper like : “user Creato makes apps that make people dumber” It is you who have to go on the defensive, especially if it gets spread far and wide, regardless if it is true or not. But the lie is out there and your truth has to catch up.
- social_quotient 6y ago
  Maybe zero young people but I’d say well informed middle age and up would know who Facui is. It’s hard to debate this with a source but these people have even in the news for decades when things go wrong. I disagree with the “effective 0%”
  - dgfitz 6y ago
    I’m a allegedly well-educated well-over-30s person, didn’t know who either of them were.
  - reillyse 6y ago
    Here is the google trends data from Fauci. https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=today%205-y&geo=US&q=Anthony%20Fauci https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=today%205-y&ge...
  - social_quotient 6y ago
    Gosh down votes for this Okay let me try to show my side of “0%“ is wrong” “author, coauthor, or editor of more than 1,300 scientific publications, including several textbooks.“ “Dr. Fauci ranked 7th out of more than 1.8 million authors in the field of immunology by total citation count between 1980 and January 2020.” Note this isn’t just 2020. It’s a long history. “Dr. Fauci was appointed director of NIAID in 1984.” And has served under 6 presidents. Most of which had more than 1 term. If you are looking for a long list of awards and honorary doctorates head over to his Wikipedia page. To the replies I got - I don’t consider 30’s middle aged. I guess I was thinking if you were around with AIDS news in the 80’s you might remember him. Oxford dictionary considers middled aged 45-65 - google trending searches isn’t how I would evaluate the history of someone over decades of time. For fun I did fin a bunch of videos of times he was on TV via YouTube. So again my point is that 0% is far from right.
- jMyles 6y ago
  Effectively 0% of people knew Anthony Fauci?
- matwood 6y ago
  I think if someone was gay and or dealt with HIV in some form, they likely heard of Dr Fauci. Researchers definitely know who is. From his CDC bio: “In a 2020 analysis of Google Scholar citations, Dr. Fauci ranked as the 41st most highly cited researcher of all time. According to the Web of Science, Dr. Fauci ranked 7th out of more than 1.8 million authors in the field of immunology by total citation count between 1980 and January 2020.”
  - sukilot 6y ago
    Right, that's no one, statistically speaking. In particular, the people calling for Fauci's family to be harmed are not in the group you mentioned.
Vinnl 6y ago
But Gates is controversial because of the work he did that make him a qualified source, so it's not unlikely that any reasonable alternative would also have their name "tarnished".
asalahli 6y ago
That's an interesting claim. Pretty much every piece of negative opinion of Gates I've seen have either been 1. About his work at Microsoft 2. Or some conspiracy theory about world domination, population control etc I'd be interested to read more on how societies he's directly worked with think of him, if you have any links
- throwaway12992 6y ago
  It has to do with Gates' vaccine program in India. Here is a paper you can read. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/30111741/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/30111741/
  - throwaway12992 6y ago
    Not a paper, but perhaps worth reading, is this article, which discusses other conflict of interest accusations. https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/industry/healthcare/biotech/healthcare/controversial-vaccine-studies-why-is-bill-melinda-gates-foundation-under-fire-from-critics-in-india/articleshow/41280050.cms https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/industry/healthcare/bio...
    - darawk 6y ago
      The point of this article appears to be that the Gates foundation simultaneously promotes vaccination and helps pharmaceutical companies with their vaccine research. While that is technically a conflict of interest...it's not much of one. They do both of those things vaccines because vaccines save millions of lives per year. It'd be like saying it's a conflict of interest to promote access to clean water, while also investing in companies that supply clean water. Sure. It's a conflict. It's also exactly what you would do if you just wanted people to have clean water.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
- schemy 6y ago
  I'm not interested in digging up the information on this because it was over 10 years ago, so take it with a huge grain of salt. He had this huge presentation about a laser zapping mosquitoes. The patent was fed to a patent troll, the whole board was stacked with his friends, the company produced nothing and was set up to sue anyone who did try and produce anything. 10 years later they still haven't produced more than the one prototype. The 'charitable' donations were literally just tax write offs that paid for his friends salary. Since then I really don't take him seriously at all. His charities are just a way to reduce his tax bill and look like he cares, while he's just paying his friends to work on projects they find interesting regardless of the chance of success. In short: hubris, corruption, white collar rico and tax evasion.
fanatic2pope 6y ago
Makes no difference. Ohio had Amy Acton, a medical doctor who specialized in public health. She did a great job but the right wing nutcases still sent her and her family death threats to the point where she was forced to resign.
Nursie 6y ago
So... do you keep picking new spokespeople when each one becomes unreasonably tarnished? Because each and every person who promotes public health and (particularly) vaccination, eventually has so much baseless shit thrown at them that they become 'tarnished' before long. Or should we try to make some sort of stand, and let the wingnuts know their opinions don't matter? We see the effects of this sort of compromise in the vaccine space - perfectly safe additives were removed in an effort to assuage fears, but that action was twisted into a victory by antivax campaigners - "see, we were right, it was harmful, they lied, we forced them to remove it". (Gates is tarnished in my eyes for computer industry reasons, but I have no issue with his record in public health)
tptacek 6y ago
So, the Heckler's Veto, then?

goldforever 6y ago

"Bill Gates is a public health expert." - WRONG

AmericanChopper 6y ago

Bill Gates certainly doesn’t have the credentials of a public health expert. His work with health experts has extended to funding and choosing what problems to solve. You’d presume he’s learned a fair amount about it over the years. But I’ve learned a fair amount about accountancy through my years of working with corporate accountants. I’m definitely not an accountancy expert though. What qualifications do you imagine he has? What significant work do you believe he has personally contributed to?

ipsum2 6y ago
If your full time job is to lead corporate accountants / head a large corporate accountancy firm and you've done it for several years, I'd consider you an accountancy expert.
- AmericanChopper 6y ago
  I guess that makes the guy who manages my software engineering team a software engineering expert too? As far as I can tell, the person who actually leads the Gates Foundation health division is Trevor Mundel. Even then, the work of the Gates Foundation has been in funding projects lead by other organisations, rather than in implementing those projects themselves.
  - ipsum2 6y ago
    > I guess that makes the guy who manages my software engineering team a software engineering expert too? If they do it very well and can point to measurable results of success, I would think so!
    - AmericanChopper 6y ago
      So if an engineering team is successful, then their manager is necessarily an engineering expert? You’re really not providing any rationale to support this rather extreme position. Bill Gates experience in the field of public health is choosing projects to finance, and even then he is not the primary person responsible for that in his foundation. Bill Gates has no credentials you could point to, and has done no work you could point to, that would support an assertion of him being a public health expert. It is frankly a ridiculous proposition.

sukilot 6y ago

Why do we want to hear from Fauci instead of Trump? Why get information thirdhand from the money guy?

blhack 6y ago
Because he isn't just the money guy.
whynotminot 6y ago
I mean but you can take this even further using your logic: Why even listen to Dr. Fauci, then? Is Fauci at Moderna right now actually making the vaccine? Get me the lab tech running the tests and I'll settle for nothing less!

3131s 6y ago

It doesn't matter how long. The "go-to" source should have integrity, along with no financial stake in the issues at hand.

bostonvaulter2 6y ago
I would argue that "no financial stake" is not a good metric because basically all experts have a financial stake in their area of expertise.
frandroid 6y ago
A financial stake is usually about making a profit. The Gates Foundation is not going to make any profit here, it's looking at funding vaccines at super low cost and giving them away or the manufacturer selling them for as little as possible to governments who would give them away. I hated Gates the monopolist and the foundation has messed up on a few questions (see: efforts in Education), but how in hell can you say that it has a financial stake? If anything, the most successful people are at finding a solution, the more he's going to deplete the coffers of the Foundation, as a vaccine manufacturing force multiplier.

blub 6y ago

Goes to show that with enough money and effort one can not only clean up their tarnished image, but also become a public authority.

harry8 6y ago

Well anyone who has extensively published novel research that has altered best practise in the field for the better and has a track record of being sensible, well-reasoned, logical, has an understanding of how humans organise not just the natural world and has wonderful command of spoken and written expression would be near the top of the wish-list. It's not how long it took that person to demonstrate this. It's that Gates kinda hasn't really done it. He's far from terrible but he gets pretty low scores on most of those attributes. He's not going to be listened to if he didn't bring the money. His experience in making microsoft a juggernaut in the 80s and 90s is not super-relevant here but that's why he's being held up as an "authority." That position of authority is one he seems very happy to hold and use as a pulpit. Is it deserved at all? Maybe it is. He did bring the money to a lot of programs and I believe he is even bankrolling the WHO nowadays (worthwhile after their multiple screwups that continue? I don't know. Maybe it is and a vital service he's performed there). Gates an expert? Hmm. Don't think he's really demonstrated that conclusively. He'd use his position to get advice from one or more, one would think. To be clear. More power to him giving his vast wealth away to try and make the world better in tangible ways. You can't possibly spend more than $100m in your life on consumption even if you're totally nuts. Go for immortality. Do it in a way that's kinda good. Go Bill! I pray your good intentions don't pave a road you don't want built as I do everyone's good intentions, including my own.

cma 6y ago
> but that's why he's being held up as an "authority." Look at his prepandemic warnings of a pandemic and how it would play out. And real money and action in trying to prevent it. That's why he is being held up as an authority.
netsharc 6y ago
Presumably Bill Gates was a good manager and CEO, he became the richest man in the world by running a very successful software company. And in his current field of "global health" he hopefully has as good of a grasp of the issues, the proposed solutions, and since he's a smart man he's hopefully able to separate the bullshit from the effective solutions.