The attempt by the United States and other Western countries at the World Health Assembly late last month to amend the International Health Regulations and strengthen the arm of the WHO in health emergencies foundered for lack of support from African nations, among others, who appear to have regarded the effort as imperialistic. This is good news, as no good can come of giving a larger role (and budget) to the WHO, which disgraced itself repeatedly during the Covid pandemic, most crucially by throwing away the existing pandemic preparedness guidance and the science it was based on and allowing itself to become a cheerleader and channel for the deadly new pseudo-science of lockdowns, as invented by the Chinese Communist Party on January 23rd 2020.
Last week’s failed amendments were bad, but they were not a new treaty and would not, as some suggested, have given the WHO power to impose lockdowns on countries (the WHO’s power to declare a health emergency in a country without its consent is already part of the IHR). There is, however, a new pandemic treaty in the pipeline, to be negotiated and drafted over the next few years. Quite why a new treaty is needed is not really clear, as there is already a treaty that covers pandemics, namely the International Health Regulations. It also isn’t clear that a new treaty is politically possible; if countries can’t even agree on amendments to the existing international pandemic rules they seem unlikely to be able to agree and pass a whole new treaty on the subject. Plus, a new treaty, if passed, would be most unlikely to involve countries agreeing to cede sovereignty to the WHO to impose lockdowns and other emergency measures within their territories without their consent.
Nevertheless, that doesn’t mean we should be complacent, particularly as the U.K. Government responded to the recent petition calling for a referendum of the British electorate before signing any pandemic treaty (signed by over 150,000 people so far) by doubling down and committing itself to agreeing to a “legally binding” treaty that is not yet even drafted. True, it’s international law so there is no court to enforce it, and as noted above countries are unlikely to agree to cede real control over their pandemic responses. Nonetheless, there are still plenty of reasons to be concerned about the Government committing to sign an undrafted “legally binding” WHO pandemic treaty, not least that creating a whole international pandemic bureaucracy that depends for its purpose, existence and funding on the occurrence of pandemics is undoubtedly to open the door to overreaction and overreach, even more than we have already. The last thing we need is the WHO putting the world on permanent pandemic alert and pushing for ‘precautionary’ lockdowns every time a bat sneezes or a lab leaks.
Brian Monteith at Time for Recovery has set out seven reasons the Government should not support or sign a new WHO pandemic treaty. Here are his first four.
1. There is no sense, no logic, no rational justification for rushing into accepting the terms of a binding international treaty on future pandemic responses when we have not had our Public Inquiry to determine what we should avoid doing in future. Given the clear and uncontested levels of incompetence and miscalls in the authorities’ panic to respond to COVID-19 there is every probability that the same mistakes will be repeated, with lives lost, livelihoods ruined, education forever lost and the future of generations put at risk if we do not wait and learn the lessons of the Inquiry’s findings. We need to understand what we got right and what we got wrong before agreeing to who will decide our response in the future.
2. The Government has no democratic mandate to sign away its responsibilities to protect and guard the safety of the British people. The Government has a duty of care to ensure that the best public health responses are made. This does not rule out the Government agreeing to take up recommendations that WHO might choose to make in the future, but such decisions should only be appropriate when they can be assessed against what is required in the best interests of the British people – not what is decided by a majority of unaccountable people whose interests, no matter how well intentioned, lie elsewhere.
3. The poor record of WHO during the pandemic does not justify agreeing any international treaty that cedes power over decisions to the institution, not least because it is open to manipulation by foreign powers and multi-national corporations – both groups whose interests will often conflict with those of the British people. Do we really want China, or Russia or other such powers deciding in consort that we should lockdown and have international law on their side so that it may be enforced against our wishes? The variations in international responses – between that of Sweden (minimal restrictions, low pandemic deaths) and Peru (highly restrictive lockdowns and high pandemic deaths) – is wide. Why should the U.K. not set its own course rather than be told what our response must be?
4. There is every possibility that what WHO decides will be wrong. There is an understandable and acceptable case for shared levels of information gathering, dissemination of research and learning from experiences that shape best practice – but this is completely different from a Government abdicating its ability to choose how to act, not least when it can mean confining people to their homes, preventing them from meeting family, being able to work, attend school, walk on a park, attend a wedding or a funeral, pray together in a place of worship – and be criminalised for not accepting such restrictions. If our Government gets its decisions wrong it is accountable to us – if WHO gets it decisions wrong it is accountable to no-one – and certainly not us. We need to have accountability and that means our Government must take responsibility for pandemics – not outsource decisions overseas.
Read Brian’s other three reasons here.
To join in with the discussion please make a donation to The Daily Sceptic.
Profanity and abuse will be removed and may lead to a permanent ban.
Informative graph, but Pakistan and Bangladesh notably absent – camouflaged by British citizenship and/or difficult to track stats for non-citizens?
They are on the chart. Both names overlaying each other, mixed in with Nigeria and Slovakia.
Okay thanks, gotcha.
They are overwritten bottom left, just above Latvia and Slovakia.
The question is, what are our authorities going to do with this table? Ignore it, I suppose.
Just look at US crime statistics by race.
Bit of a change of tack from Farage here;
“But it is our intention, ultimately, that if you’ve come illegally, you should not be able to stay.”
”Nigel Farage has announced a change in Reform UK’s policy on illegal immigration, now seeming to support, at least in principle, the mass deportation of ALL illegal immigrants in Britain.
“I know the problem is huge, because there are an estimated 1.2 million people here illegally. And going beyond the last 100,000 is not going to be an easy job. It’s going to be one hell of a battle, and we know that the state, the apparatus of state, will fight us at every point.”
This follows his comments last year, in an interview with Steven Edginton on GB News, where he said it was not his ambition to deport all illegal immigrants, saying “it is a political impossibility.”
During the press conference, Farage also said:
“We will bring a total end to all asylum claims from people who have come here on travel visas, or who are overseas students.”
“We will demand the deportation of all foreign criminals.”
He promises Reform will appoint a Minister for Deportations if the win the next general election.
He also suggests the citizenship of foreign nationals given the right to remain in Britain may be revisited if they commit crimes.
Are Reform listening to criticism that they have softened on immigration lately?
Farage promises further policy announcements in three-to-four weeks’ time.”
https://x.com/Con_Tomlinson/status/1915357142988546439
They are still building the policy platform, and so some fluidity in the detail is to be expected.
Is that Neil-speak for Nigel’s flip flopping? He seems to be blowing in the wind these days, particularly since his chairman bought his way in and they set up yet another limited company together
Nationalities don’t commit crimes. People commit crimes and people also have a nationality. That there are lots of Albanian criminals in the UK doesn’t meant lots of Albanians are criminals (they might or might not be but nothing about this follows from the initial observation).
You’re right, but at a group level, some groups are more inclined than others to certain behaviours. The much more interesting question is what do you do with the information. There are various options, none of which will be followed.
Groups have no behaviour. If some set of people is artificially partioned into some set groups and one then looks for a certain propery among group members, the rate of occurence of the property will vary between the artificially created groups, as it would also vary for any other conceivable artificial partition. This is essentially historical information of no conceivable use beyond being descriptive for the period of time which is covered.
In addition to this, the population numbers used to calculate the imprisonment rates are estimates aka guesses as the actual numbers are unknown and the rates are really pretty low. Eg, according to the Noah Carl article, 70.3 of every 1000 Albanians in the UK are in prison. That’s 7.03% which means that about 13.2 Albanians in the UK aren’t in prison for every Albanian in the UK who is.
If you have an idea what should be done to these 13 Albanians because of the 1 Albanian in prison, I’d like to know about it. My idea would be nothing.
I would stop all immigration for a few centuries. If I ever restarted it I would favour races that had a track record of developing advanced civilisations whose history and culture were similar to ours- basically, white Europeans. I believe that would make our country a better place to live in than alternative approaches. As to those already here, deport all illegals and cut back welfare hoping that at least some of those making a negative contribution would decide to leave. Deport all foreign criminals.
That’s principally something I agree with. But not because of statistics like the one mentioned in this article which I consider essentially meaningless minus better truisms like Operations of criminals are more mobile than those of people who aren’t.
Kind of welcome but only a baby step in the right direction.
Valuable chiefly as an indication that the political weather is finally starting to change on this vital issue.
Long long way to go.