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Ken Shamrock chimed in on a social medial story going around about a supposed ‘implant chip’ Bill Gates is using to fight the coronavirus.
One of the unintended consequences to writing about a sport like MMA in the middle of a pandemic is getting to see more of What People Think. For better. Or for worse.
Today’s edition of What People Think is brought to you by Ken Shamrock. Shamrock, either reading it himself or coming across it on social media, got wind of Bill Gates’ AMA on Reddit from a couple of weeks ago and took today to chime in.
Bill Gates is saying he is working on a vaccine for the virus that would take a implant chip to fight the virus. Me personally would never put a chip in my body goes against my beliefs
— KEN SHAMROCK (@ShamrockKen) March 31, 2020
Shamrock isn’t being as hyperbolic as it might seem. Gates did, indeed, discuss the possibility of “digital certificates.”
In response to a question about what kind of changes must be made going forward with regular business operations and physical distancing, Gates had this to say:
Eventually we will have some digital certificates to show who has recovered or been tested recently or when we have a vaccine who has received it.
So what are these digital certificates? How will they fight the coronavirus? Will they use a chip implant, sci-fi dystopia style?
For one, as you can see, Bill Gates never actually talks about using a chip to fight COVID-19. This idea actually comes from a bioengineering professor affiliated with the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. This “implant chip” technology refers to something called quantum dot tattoos. They’re dissolvable microneedles used to create a potential record of who is or is not vaccinated. Why? To help with identifying immunization in developing countries where a lack of vaccinations leads to preventable deaths. There’s no evidence of these as ‘implantable microchips’ either.
The technology itself is several years away. So is a vaccine for the coronavirus: for reasons that are understandable, and reasons that aren’t. I don’t think Shamrock is saying anything crazy, so much as tacitly echoing the social media echo chamber.
Besides. Nobody needs a some obscure technology years away to track your every move. Your phone and the laws that don’t prevent companies from sharing that data already do a pretty damn good job of that.