While some may say there’s no such thing as a stupid question, there are definitely a few things you might want to look up privately instead of asking someone else if you’re, say, the president of the United States. Case in point: Bill Gates says that Donald Trump asked him not once, but twice, what the difference between HIV and HPV is.
The Microsoft founder and billionaire recently revealed the president’s confusion at a Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation meeting. The footage was made public by MSNBC’s All in With Chris Hayes:
Gates shared that he had met with Trump in December 2016 and March 2017 and that “he asked me if vaccines weren’t a bad thing because he was considering a commission to look into ill-effects of vaccines.” (Gates says he dissuaded the president from doing this.) “Both times he wanted to know the difference between HIV and HPV and so I was able to explain that those are things that are rarely confused with each other,” he added, to audience laughter.
HPV — human papillomavirus — is a common sexually transmitted infection that affects the skin and other membranes. There’s a risk of it developing into cancer, as well as a vaccine against it. HIV — human immunodeficiency virus — attacks the immune system and can lead to AIDS. There’s no known cure.
In the future, Trump can rest assured that all that information is easily findable on the CDC website.