It does speak to why he's treated with so much distrust, as is discussed by other threads. Unlike the average person, Gates is someone who can actually make things happen with his incredible wealth. It suggests a form of paternalistic authoritarian attitude towards social issues that undeniably colors his attitude towards this pandemic.

You can also read in his tone that he feels personally slighted by not being given a seat at the table in the US COVID response. People point to South Korea's success and call the US a failure, not realizing that if you implemented their measures in the US: things like forced contact tracing, forced registration, and locking up the infected in isolated sites, you'd have a civil insurrection on your hands.

History of democracy in South Korea is short, and privacy is not recognized as an important virtue. Sacrificing your rights for the nation (or historically the kingdom) is an important duty, and failure to abide by such ‘selflessness’ is deemed as malicious and egocentric. It will take many more decades for South Korea to shed its cultural shadow of being subject to a ruler.

A case and point: Seoul is riddled with security cameras on every street. This makes Seoul an incredibly safe city, but also with decreased sense of privacy. Cameras are everywhere, and this is not recognized much as a potential problem in South Korea.

With Covid, there is a pending legislation to sign in your name and social security number whenever you visit designated crowded areas. I am worried for the increased loss of freedom and privacy in South Korea, but the culture worries less about that, and more about mutual subsistence.

If a student failed a biology class because his hyper-religious parents would beat him if he didn't, he still failed.

And it's right to publicly shame him for that?

Nature may be less considerate. The problem with failing or particular case isn't the shame, it's the death and destruction.

> The fact that Gates has an opinion that you, I or indeed everyone disagrees with is not interesting.

Evidently it is interesting to the HN croud, because this is how they vote.

Why argue about this? This is what we have a voting system on HN for. It shows us what is objectively interesting and what is not, we don't really need you or anyone else to tell us what should be interesting, we have real data to demonstrate what is.