The WHO Takes Another Step Towards the Pit

Last week, amid fanfare from both advocates and opponents of centralization of future pandemic management, the world continued its unfortunate stumble back to old-fashioned public health fascism. The World Health Assembly (WHA) adopted the package of amendments to the 2005 International Health Regulations (IHR), apparently just hours after a final text had been agreed by its IHR working group. 

The amendments were watered down from previous proposals, under which countries would undertake to place areas of their citizen’s health and human rights under the direction of a single individual in Geneva. Nonetheless, they lay vital groundwork for the further subversion of public health toward a recurrent but lucrative cycle of fear-mongering, suppression, and coercion.

A day previous, the draft Pandemic Agreement (treaty) had been put back for further negotiation for up to 12 months, undoubtedly a setback for the World Health Organization (WHO) Director-General and his major private and national donors. Chief among the reasons seems to be a continuing reluctance of African countries (and some others) to roll back healthcare to a pre-WHO colonialist model. This is understandable, but African countries are heavily indebted, especially since the economy-shattering response to Covid-19 that the WHO and others convinced, or coerced, them to follow.

It seems likely that a reformed Intergovernmental Negotiation Body (INB) will be more circumspect in the way it manages debate over the coming months, and external pressure on countries will be ramped up. There is much at stake, hundreds of billions in profit per pandemic if Covid-19 is a guide. Countries with major Pharma interests take this seriously. So do the World Bank and International Monetary Fund, which have previously signaled strong support.

The Key IHR Amendments Were Adopted

The IHR amendments passed by the WHA appear mostly innocuous and have been widely reported as such. They add catchphrases like equity in a context of intent to push commodity-based responses and restrictions of freedom that clearly increase inequity, and emphasize the needs of low-income countries whilst commoditizing pandemic responses to the benefit of Western institutions. However, the important gain for the WHO and its backers (almost 80% of its work is specified directly by its funders) is the wording that further strengthens surveillance (Annex 1) – the key element on which the rest of the business case around future pandemics hinges. This is adopted, and there is a willing workforce to make it happen.

Surveillance ─ identifying threats early and responding ─ seems an obvious thing to support. Doubtless most country delegations were supporting them on that basis. It is particularly aimed at detecting the passage of potential pathogens from animals to humans, as in the current publicity around avian (bird) flu. This seemingly obvious public good is why this whole agenda has gotten so far, and why it is so easy to sell to anyone who has not stopped to think.

The justification for increased surveillance put forward by the WHO is hollow. Covid-19 now looks almost certain to have resulted from gain-of-function research and a subsequent lab leak. The US Congressional hearing currently underway is demonstrating that prominent scientists who wrote letters denigrating the rather obvious lab-origin hypothesis agreed in early 2020 that this was indeed likely. You don’t stop the next Covid-like event, therefore, by spending tens of billions per year on surveillance of wet markets, farms, and forest dwellers. You just watch a few labs, improve lab security or, if you are serious, stop gain-of-function research.

The other justification behind the WHO’s agenda, that outbreak risk is increasing, is demonstrated to have been grossly misrepresented by the WHO, the World Bank, and the G20 High Level Panel. The last major acute natural pandemic, as the WHO generally defines them, was the Spanish flu over a century ago. 

‘Spillover’ of potential pathogens from animals underlay the pre-antibiotic Spanish flu, and also the probable origin of HIV from a simian (primate) immunodeficiency virus. The main spillover event of HIV is considered likely to have occurred before WHO was inaugurated over 75 years ago. Apart from relatively minor influenza outbreaks (that we already have a surveillance operation to deal with), other zoonotic-spillover outbreaks have had relatively tiny mortality since.

The West African Ebola outbreak, while bad locally, killed fewer people than 4 days of tuberculosis. The first SARS outbreak in 2003 resulted in just 8 hours of tuberculosis deaths. However, funding from tuberculosis management, which deteriorated since the onset of covid, will be further diverted to this surveillance operation for hypothetical natural threats that have not eventuated in over a century.

Basic nutrition funding also declined during Covid-19, despite the number of children with malnutrition rising. The WHO’s agenda, tightly controlled by its funding, is inevitably shifting from population health to the health of Pharma and laboratory research. The Western research community has simply proven more powerful than the communities that the WHO was supposed to serve. Money has a way of salving pricks of conscience, and people need a job.

Building the Industry’s Foundations

So, to understand what is going on here, the original program within the proposed Pandemic Agreement and IHR amendments must be understood. A massive surveillance operation will be monitored and directed by the WHO, or a committee under WHO oversight. Its main focus will be the identification of viral variants that spill over from animals to humans (‘zoonotic spillover’), or the potential to do so. Many will be found, because this is nature. Sixty years ago, such outbreaks were hidden in the background of disease noise, but now we have clever technology to distinguish them. The IHR will ramp up the use of these technologies and publicize ‘threats’ ─ all that is needed to trigger a ‘Pandemic Emergency’ response.

Once a threat is identified, the Director-General can recommend a series of measures including border closures, quarantine, and mandated medical examinations. These were once considered extreme, but became mainstream in 2020 for a virus that kills mostly chronically sick people at an average age of about 80. The media, heavily sponsored by Pharma, supports this approach, while social media companies have signaled that proclamations from the WHO shall be considered the dominant, and perhaps only, allowable narrative. An IHR amendment noting the importance of suppressing contrary opinion was among those accepted in Geneva.

The WHO will share samples of newly identified viral variants with their preferred pharmaceutical companies, It will then manage the regulatory passage of their 100-day mRNA vaccines (with taxpayer support) and arrange both the market (freedom through vaccination) and liability protection (through publicly-funded insurance schemes). At least this is the intent ─ as described elsewhere. The delay in the proposed Pandemic Agreement has slowed down parts of the whole, but the 100-day vaccine program is well underway. 

So, the groundwork is laid for the surveil-declare threat-lockdown-coerced mass vaccination approach that has been brewing as an idea among Pharma-related circles for over a decade, and forms such an unbeatable way of extracting money from others, whilst appearing on a superficial level to be altruistic. There are solid reasons why penalties for fraud are seen by Pharma as just another business expense. There are also reasons why coercion and conflict of interest were once considered incompatible with public health. However, the growing army of public health bureaucrats and researchers now dependent on this model have a strong interest in making it happen and are vocal in their support.

Returning Public Health to its Unedifying Roots

Covid-19 proved this paradigm can concentrate wealth, and power, at an unprecedented rate. The WHO, transformed over recent decades from an international organization answerable to all Member States to a public-private partnership directly responsive to its major funders, is the obvious tool to bring this together. But the World Bank has its own pandemic fund, the World Economic Forum of private rich people has cemented its influence over national leaders, and the United Nations Secretariat has its coming Summit for the Future in September 2024. The noise in Geneva over the past two weeks constitutes just a part of this behemoth of centralized control and, of course, centralization of wealth.

Colonialism in the 19^th century was built on equity and inclusion. The colonies needed to be conquered and suppressed so that the benefits of another’s superior civilization could be foisted on them for their own good. Slavery was sometimes justified in a similar manner. European fascism and the eugenics and technocracy movements of early 20th-century North America were based on similar principles. What we are seeing from the international public health establishment is no different, and will be no less nasty in its outcomes. The IHR amendments we have just seen adopted, like the early policies of Mussolini, will be important in building the machine required to run it.

We have just taken a further step down the road to a world built on false claims and the rule of self-declared experts. This is not something that can be ‘won’ but an unending battle against human greed and self-interest that will always be with us. The hard part is to recognize the intent through the mix of fear (keep watching bird flu) and flowery verbiage. When those who advocate a change are the ones who stand to gain at others’ expense, and when they misrepresent the risks of failing to follow their lead, we should start to understand. Greed is not a new problem. 

The recent months of negotiations have shown that many involved in the process are recognizing potential harms, and a few countries are raising reservations. However, self-interest, coercion, and propaganda are a powerful combination. Those pushing medical fascism, and those enchanted by it, are very much in control. A further step down this fascist road is no victory. But if we keep exposing false narratives and refuse to comply with stupidity, there are signs that the worst of the current agenda may yet be derailed. Truth remains the chief enemy of all that is currently being forced on the world by a self-entitled few.