Bill Gates on Track to Grow His Fortune Through Foundation’s Ties to Vaccine Makers

By Jeremy Loffredo

A telling piece in The Nation this week reports some of the conflicts of interest the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation holds in the world’s quest for a COVID-19 vaccine. According to the article, the foundation’s investments in companies working to develop COVID-19 vaccines put Gates “in a position to potentially reap considerable financial gains from the COVID-19 pandemic.”

The Nation cites the example of the foundation’s $40 million stake in CureVac, a German pharmaceutical company whose stock soared 400% after going public in August. A similar Nation article from earlier this year reported the Gates Foundation also holds corporate stocks and bonds in drug companies Merck, GlaxoSmithKline, Novartis and Sanofi, and the foundation gives these same companies charitable grants for projects like developing new drugs.

AstraZeneca, the British pharmaceutical company that gained…