Bill Gates Had to Explain to Donald Trump The Difference Between HIV & HPV

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In a video obtained by MSNBC’s All In with Chris Hayes, Bill Gates reveals that while meeting with Donald Trump at Trump Tower in December 2016 — and another time in March 2017 — the president asked him if HIV and HPV were the same thing.

After you slap yourself across the head from shock, continue…

“Both times, he wanted to know if there was a difference between HPV and HIV,” he said in the clip. “So I was able to explain that those are rarely confused with each other.”

The Human Papillomaviruses (HPV) can be sexually transmitted and infections are very common with relatively few people [having] lasting health effects. But HIV is a virus that corrupts the T cells of an HIV-positive person, and can lead to stage 3 HIV (or AIDS). While there is no cure, there is treatment that can lower the viral load to such low levels that makes it makes them undetectable (or “untransmittable” to another person).

“In both of those two meetings, he asked me if vaccines weren’t a bad thing because he was considering a commission to look into ill effects of vaccines,” recalled Gates, who also revealed he once  “avoided” Trump when the two were in the same place during the election.