In Wednesday comments to Reuters, Gates said that there are "millions of messages out there" targeting he and Fauci, and suggested that "social media companies" might be able to censor discussion on the topic.

"Nobody would have predicted that I and Dr. Fauci would be so prominent in really kind of evil theories about – did we create the pandemic, are we trying to profit from it? – and on and on," said Gates, adding "We're going to have to get educated about this over the next year and understand, how does it change people's behavior?"

"How should we have minimized this, either working with the social media companies or explaining what we were up to in a better way?"

Gates' motives have come under fire over his foundation's 2019 participation in "Event 201" - a collaboration between the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security, the World Economic Forum and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation which simulated a global pandemic after a fictional coronavirus broke out among pigs in Brazil, before spreading to farmers.