He helped championed one of the Covid vaccines, but also forced the private ownership and profit of it. Something the scientists working on it didn't want to do. This in an stark contrast to the polio vaccine, which was free and who's lead scientist referred the idea as "trying to own sunlight".
This is true. It was said by Jonas Salk, who was attributed with the creation of the injectable vaccine in the 1950s that was greenlit for widespread use.
The injectable vaccine is a non-sterilizing vaccine (meaning you still get the disease, but your body can fight it off effectively - which is most vaccines). The injection vaccine was replaced by a sterilizing vaccine (where your bodily systems can kill the virus before you become contagious, and in many cases, before symptoms). The sterilizing vaccine, used to this day, is basically a magic potion that you drink. It kills the polio virus in your gut, which is the ingress method for polio.
From what I've seen, Salk didn't live to see the success of his vaccine; but he's a hero in my mind.
My late father was a polio survivor. He was permanently disabled as a result of the disease. He lost something like 70% of the use of his right (?) leg (could have been his left). He was still ambulatory, and could walk, but often needed to use his stronger leg when climbing stairs because his disabled leg was too weak to lift him up the stairs. He walked with a limp... And he was lucky. Post-polio survivors frequently had much more severe disabilities. I saw him struggle with the effects of it my entire life, and given he only had a relatively mild disability, I consider anyone who developed a poliovirus vaccine to be a hero of humanity, and anyone who refuses that vaccine to be an ignorant fool.
Salk's comments are just icing on that hero status for me.
Even with issues like polio where he's supposedly doing good, he does lots of harm from my understanding. Probably not though malice, but being a know-it-all who uses their money to shape policy, the end result is still the same. Having a tech billionaire in charge of medical policy has caused many more people to suffer from polio as a result than would have without his meddling. And that's the problem with billionaire: even if they try to be good, they're no dieties and giving that much power to unaccountable individuals means they can accidentally cause lots of harm. And often the have perverse incentives (see Bill Gates and all he's done to hurt education in the US, for example).
On the education thing, this AP article doesn't go too heavily into policy details but does cover the extent of Gates' influence on the American education system.
Or were you talking about the controversies surrounding the Foundation's handling of certain diseases? Here's one from PBS that's arguably the most neutral I could find outlining criticisms regarding joint efforts between the Gates Foundation, WHO, and various governments/orgs on eradicating polio and issues with their strategies.
Gonna take a few downvotes and agree with you. Dude donates so much to the world health organization he beats all other COUNTRIES except for the US. If all billionaires were like him, the world would be a much better place.
He and Buffet have been making a lot of progress towards affordable, renewable energy in poverty stricken and rural areas. So Buffet might be alright too.