40% of Republicans think Bill Gates planning to implant microchips: poll

PanARMENIAN.Net - 44% of Republicans believe that Bill Gates is plotting to use a mass Covid-19 vaccination campaign as a pretext to implant microchips in billions of people and monitor their movements, according to a new Yahoo News/YouGov poll.

The survey, which was conducted May 20 and 21, found that only 26% of Republicans correctly identify the story as false.

In contrast, just 19% of Democrats believe the same spurious narrative about the Microsoft founder and public-health philanthropist. A majority of Democrats recognize that it’s not true.

The new Yahoo News/YouGov poll found that this “choose your own reality” effect is distorting perceptions of nearly every aspect of the pandemic, from reopening to vaccination to the official death toll. A broad majority of the public is either “very” (56%) or “somewhat” concerned (30%) about “false or misleading information being communicated about coronavirus.” That sentiment, at least, is not partisan: More than 80% of Democrats, Republicans and independents agree.

More than 2 million have recovered from the novel coronavirus globally, according to Johns Hopkins University, which is tracking figures from the World Health Organization and additional sources. There are now more than 5.2 million cases of the novel coronavirus worldwide, while more than 338,000 people have died from Covid-19 complications.