Bill Gates Praises a Country He Previously Trashed

Yes, billionaires can change their minds too.

Score one for South Asia, as Bill Gates is a fan. 

The Microsoft co-founder returned from a trip to India last week, and the experience reinvigorated him, according to his blog, GatesNotes. 

Gates went to Mumbai, Delhi, and Bangalore, met with Prime Minister Narendra Modi and toured different parts of the country. He said he was in the country "learning about the innovative work going on here in health, climate change, and other crucial areas."

Gates lamented that his ability to travel has been limited over the past three years because of the covid-19 pandemic -- though Gates' travel habits have made headlines in recent weeks -- but said his trip to India reminded him that the country has the "amazing ability to manufacture lots of safe, effective, and affordable vaccines."

Then again, it was more than a year after the pandemic started that the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation reversed their earlier decision and endorsed a covid vaccine patent waiver for countries like India.

And at the time, he didn't seem very convinced that countries like India could safely produce the vaccine. 

"There’s only so many vaccine factories in the world and people are very serious about the safety of vaccines,” Gates said. “And so moving something that had never been done, moving a vaccine from say a J&J factory into a factory in India, it’s novel. It’s only because of our grants and expertise that that can happen at all," Gates said in an interview with SkyNews in April 2021.