From New York Times, I'm Michael Bobaro. This is a Daily.

Over the past few decades, the world's most powerful philanthropist became the most powerful

private citizen in public health. Today, my colleagues Megan Tuy and Nick Coolish examine

how Bill Gates is changing the way the world is vaccinated and potentially the course

of the pandemic.

It's Wednesday, March 3rd.

So Megan and Nick, how did this reporting start for both of you?

Well, I'm an investigative reporter who last year started doing reporting on the pandemic.

And by the summer, I decided to turn my attention to the world of vaccines.

And as I started digging almost immediately, I started to hear the name Bill Gates

over and over again.

And it wasn't clear exactly what he was doing, but it was clear that he seemed to have

his hands and everything vaccine related.

And also there were these crazy conspiracy theories about him about how he was using the

pandemic and vaccines to put microchips in people so that he could track them.

Now that's patently false, right?

But it was clear that people didn't know what he was actually doing.

And I write about philanthropy for the times.

And in the world of philanthropy, there's no group as big or as important really as the

Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.

And from my reporting on the philanthropy side, I kept hearing Gates, Gates, Gates.

And pretty soon we realized there was a big piece to the pandemic story that wasn't being

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