Quick Hits: Bill Gates is Funding Factories for Potential Coronavirus Vaccines

It shouldn’t come as a surprise to you, but Bill Gates’ latest humanitarian and philanthropic effort is continuing the fight against coronavirus. According to a recent Business Insider article, Gates is investing in factories to produce seven promising coronavirus vaccines. At best, he believes two of the seven will last, but it makes more sense to build manufacturing capacity for all seven now, rather than waste time waiting to see which vaccines work and then building. 

“It’ll be a few billion dollars we’ll waste on manufacturing for the constructs that don’t get picked because something else is better. But a few billion in this situation we’re in, where there’s trillions of dollars [...] being lost economically, it is worth it,” Gates said. This manufacturing effort is in addition $100 million the Gates Foundation has already pledged toward the coronavirus fight.