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Bill Gates Once More Steps in It with His Take on COVID

Bill Gates has had some pretty hot takes on the Wuhan coronavirus, and not in a good way. Back in February, he praised Australia's "Zero COVID" methods, despite how it came at the expense of many civil liberties. That same month he had also likened mask mandates to being required to wear pants in public. 

In a video clip shared over Twitter on Thursday afternoon by a user known as "TheNo1Waffler," which as of Friday evening has 862,700 views, Gates acknowledges the virus is "kind of like the flu."

Speaking about "early February," Gates said that he and experts at his foundation "didn't understand the fatality rate. We didn't understand that it's a fairly low fatality rate and that it's a disease mainly of the elderly, kind of like the flu is, though it's a bit different from that."

Many took to respond over Twitter that Gates was very late to the party on this one.

Others pointed out how Gates is not exactly an expert in epidemiology.

Another point worth mentioning is that what Gates is saying, would have once gotten others fact-checked or censored.

And, in another clip, this time from Gates' appearance on "The Daily Show" earlier this week, Gates was similarly mocked. As our friends at Twitchy pointed out, it was certainly noteworthy how he failed to mention the gain-of-function involved in spreading the Wuhan coronavirus. 

Speaking of the virus, Gates had said that "it's quite clear in this case" that it "came across through animals. And almost all our diseases, like HIV, crossed over from chimpanzees in Africa quite some time ago; Ebola came from bats, this also, with one step in between came across from bats."

This isn't all we're going to hear from Gates on the matter. Far from it. He even has a book coming out, "How to Prevent the Next Pandemic," urging how we must already be preparing for the next pandemic. Gates has thus suggested a Global Epidemic Response and Mobilization (GERM) team. 

And yet, as Twitchy also pointed out, he curiously restricted replies in advertising the book over Twitter.