“Do you still think it’s a conspiracy theory?” reads the caption of a Facebook post shared on January 30, 2025, with a photo of a person holding up the front page of a newspaper called “The Sovereign Independent”.
Alongside a picture of Gates, the headline reads: “Depopulation Through Forced Vaccination: The Zero Carbon Solution!”
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Screenshot of the false Facebook post, taken on February 11, 2025
Text overlaid on the image reads: “This woman is holding a newspaper she has kept since 2011. The paper contains an article by Bill Gates called ‘Depopulation through Compulsory Vaccination’. Gates thinks it will be the most ‘environmentally friendly solution’. No one gave this much thought at the time.”
The post has been shared more than a hundred times while the same claim has circulated on X, Instagram, and TikTok.
Conspiracy theories about using vaccines to reduce the world’s population are not new but they gained traction in 2020 when many countries made the Covid-19 jab compulsory for cross-border travel.
Kennedy, widely known as RFK Jr., labelled the Covid-19 vaccine “the deadliest ever made” (archived here).
He has also been criticised for promoting debunked claims linking childhood vaccines to autism and suggesting that HIV does not cause AIDS. In addition, he has faced accusations that he stoked anti-measles vaccine sentiment in Samoa during a 2019 visit, months before a deadly outbreak.
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