Sceptics of the growing ‘pandemic prevention, preparedness and response’ (PPR) agenda celebrated recently, heralding a perceived ‘defeat’ of the World Health Organisation’s (WHO) controversial amendments to the International Health Regulations (IHR). Although the proposed amendments would have undoubtedly expanded the WHO’s powers, this focus on the WHO reflects a narrow view of global health and the pandemic industry. The WHO is almost a bit-player in a much larger game of public-private partnerships and financial incentives that are driving the pandemic gravy train forward.
While the WHO works in the spotlight, the pandemic industry has been growing for over a decade and its expansion accelerates unabated. Other major players such as the World Bank, coalitions of wealthy nations at the G7 and G20 and their corporate partners work in a world less subject to transparency; a world where the rules are more relaxed and a conflict of interest receives less scrutiny.
If the global health community is to preserve public health, it must urgently understand the wider process that is underway and take action to stop it. The pandemic express must be halted by the weight of evidence and basic principles of public health.
Funding a global pandemic bureaucracy
The FIF could be a cornerstone in the construction of a truly global PPR system in the context of the International Treaty on Pandemic Prevention, Preparedness and Response, sponsored by the World Health Assembly.
WHO, April 19th 2022
The world is being told to fear pandemics. Ballooning socio-economic costs of the COVID-19 crisis are touted as justification for increased focus on PPR funding.
Calls for “urgent” collective action to avert the “next” pandemic are predicated on systemic “weaknesses” supposedly exposed by COVID-19. As the WHO steamed ahead with its push for a new pandemic ‘treaty’ during 2021, G20 members agreed to establish a Joint Finance & Health Task Force (JFHTF) to “enhance the collaboration and global cooperation on issues relating to pandemic prevention, preparedness and response”.
A World Bank-WHO report prepared for the G20 joint task force estimates that $31.1 billion will be required annually for future PPR, including $10.5 billion per year in new international financing to support perceived funding gaps in low- and middle-income countries. Surveillance-related activities comprise almost half of this, with $4.1 billion in new funding required to address perceived gaps in the system.
In public health terms, the funding proposed to expand the global PPR infrastructure is enormous. By contrast, the WHO’s approved biennium programme budget for 2022-2023 averages $3.4 billion per year. The Global Fund, the main international funder of malaria, tuberculosis and AIDS – which have a combined annual mortality of over 2.5 million – currently dispenses just $4 billion annually for the three diseases combined. Unlike COVID-19, these diseases cause significant mortality in lower income countries and in younger age groups, year in, year out.
In April 2022, the G20 agreed to establish a new “financial intermediary fund” (FIF) housed at the World Bank, to address the $10.5 billion PPR financing gap. The FIF is intended to build upon existing pandemic funding to “strengthen health systems and PPR capacities in low-income and middle-income countries and regions”. The WHO is predicted to be the technical lead, landing it with an assured role irrespective of the outcome of current ‘treaty’ discussions.
The establishment of the fund has proceeded with breathtaking speed, and it was approved on June 30th by the World Bank Board of Executive Directors. A short period of consultation precedes an expected launch in September 2022. To date, donations totalling $1.3 billion dollars have been pledged by governments, the European Commission and various private and non-government interests, including the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, Rockefeller Foundation and the Wellcome Trust. The initial areas for the fund are somewhat all-encompassing, including country-level “disease surveillance; laboratory systems; emergency communication, coordination and management; critical health workforce capacities; and community engagement”.
In scope, the fund has the appearance of a new ‘World Health Organisation’ for pandemics – to add to the existing (and ever-expanding) network of global health organisations such as the WHO; Gavi; the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations (CEPI); and the Global Fund. But is this increased expenditure on PPR justified? Are the escalating socio-economic costs of COVID-19 due to a failure to act by the global health community, as is widely claimed; or are they due to negligent acts of failure by the WHO and global governments, when they discarded previous evidenced-based pandemic guidelines?
COVID-19: failure to act or acts of failure?
In the debate surrounding the growing pandemic industry, much attention is being directed towards the central role of the WHO. This attention is understandable given the WHO’s position as the agency responsible for global public health and its push for a new international pandemic agreement.
However, the WHO’s handling of the response to COVID-19 creates serious doubts about the competency of its leadership and raises questions about whose needs the organisation is serving.
The WHO’s failure to follow its own pre-existing pandemic guidelines by supporting lockdowns, mass-testing, border closures and the multi-billion-dollar COVAX mass-vaccination program, has generated vast revenue for vaccine manufacturers and the biotech industry, whose corporations and investors are major contributors to the WHO. This approach has crippled economies, damaged existing health programmes and further entrenched poverty in low-income countries. Decades of progress in children’s health are likely to be undone, together with the destruction of the long-term prospects of tens of millions of children, through loss of education, forced child marriage and malnutrition. In abandoning its principles of equality and community-driven healthcare, the WHO appears to have become a mere pawn in the PPR game, beholden to those with the real power; the entities who are providing its income and who control the resources now being directed to this area.
Corporatising global public health
Recently established health agencies devoted to vaccination and pandemics, such as Gavi and CEPI, appear to have been highly influential from the beginning. CEPI, is the brainchild of Bill Gates, Jeremy Farrar (director of the Wellcome Trust) and others at the pro-lockdown World Economic Forum. Launched at Davos in 2017, CEPI was created to help drive the market for epidemic vaccines. It is no secret that Bill Gates has major private financial ties to the pharmaceutical industry, in addition to those of his foundation. This clearly places a question mark over the philanthropic nature of his investments.
CEPI appears to be a forerunner of what the WHO is increasingly becoming – an instrument where individuals and corporations can exert influence and improve returns by hijacking key areas of public health. CEPI’s business model, which involves taxpayers taking most of the financial risk for vaccine research and development whilst big pharma gets all the profits, is notably replicated in the World Bank-WHO report.
Gavi, itself a significant WHO donor that exists solely to increase access to vaccination, is also under direct influence of Bill Gates, via the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. Gavi’s involvement (alongside CEPI) with the WHO’s COVAX program, which diverted vast resources into COVID-19 mass-vaccination in countries where COVID-19 is a relatively small disease burden, suggests the organisation is tied more strongly to vaccine sales than genuine public health outcomes.
Pandemic funding – ignoring the big picture?
At first glance, increased PPR funding to low- and middle-income countries may seem a public good. The World Bank-WHO report claims that “the frequency and impact of pandemic-prone pathogens are increasing”. However, this is belied by reality, as the WHO lists only five ‘pandemics’ in the past 120 years, with the highest mortality occurring in the 1918-19 H1N1 (‘Spanish’) influenza pandemic, before antibiotics and modern medicine. Apart from COVID-19, the ‘Swine Flu’ outbreak in 2009-10, which killed fewer people than a normal flu year, is the only ‘pandemic’ in the past 50 years.
Such a myopic focus on pandemic risk will do little to address the most serious causes of illness and death, and it can be expected to make matters worse for people experiencing the most extreme forms of socio-economic disadvantage.
Governments of low-income countries will be ‘incentivised’ to divert resources to PPR related programs, further increasing the growing debt crisis. A more centralised, top-down public health system will lack the flexibility to meet local and regional needs. Transferring support from higher burden diseases, and drivers of economic growth, has a direct impact on mortality in these countries, particularly for children.
The WHO-World Bank report states that the pillars of the global PPR architecture must be built on the “foundational principles of equity, inclusion and solidarity”. As severe pandemics occur less than once per generation, increased spending on PPR in low- and middle-income countries clearly violates these basic principles as it diverts scarce resources away from areas of regional need to address the perceived health priorities of wealthier populations. As demonstrated by the damage caused by the COVID-19 response in both high and low-income countries, the overall harm of resource diversion from areas of greater need is likely to be universal. In failing to address such ‘opportunity costs’, recommendations by the WHO, the World Bank and other PPR partners cannot be validly based in public health; nor are they a basis for overall societal benefit.
One thing is certain. Those who will gain from this expanding pandemic gravy train will be those who gained from the response to COVID-19.
The pandemic gravy train – following the money
The new World Bank fund risks compounding existing problems in the global public health system and further compromising the WHO’s autonomy; although it is stated that the WHO will have a central ‘strategic role’, funds will be channelled through the World Bank. In essence, it financially side-steps the accountability measures at the WHO, where questions of relative worth can be raised more easily.
The proposed structure of the FIF will pave the way for organisations with strong ties to pharmaceutical and other biotech industries, such as CEPI and Gavi, to gain even greater influence over global PPR, particularly if they are appointed ‘implementing entities’ – the operational arms that will carry out the FIF’s work programme at country, regional and global level.
Although the initial implementing entities for the FIF will be UN agencies, multilateral development banks and the IMF, plans are already underway to accredit these other international health entities. Investments are likely to be heavily skewed towards biotechnological solutions, such as disease surveillance and vaccine development, at the cost of other, more pressing public health interventions.
Protecting public health rather than private wealth
If the world truly wants to address the systemic weakness exposed by COVID-19, it must first understand that this pandemic gravy train is not new; the foundations for the destruction of community- and country-based global public health began long before COVID-19.
It is unarguable that COVID-19 has proved to be a lucrative cash cow for vaccine manufacturers and the biotech industry. The public-private partnership model that now dominates global health enabled vast resources to be channelled into the pockets of corporate giants, through programmes they directly influence or even run. CEPI’s “100 days Mission” to make “safe and effective” vaccines against “viral threats” within 100 days – to “give the world a fighting chance of containing a future outbreak before it spreads to become a global pandemic” – is a permit for pharmaceutical companies to appropriate public money on an unprecedented scale, based on their own assessments of risk.
The self-fulfilment of the ‘increasing frequency of pandemics’ prophecy will be ensured by the push for increased disease surveillance – a priority area for the FIF. To quote the World Bank-WHO report:
COVID-19 highlighted the need to connect surveillance and alert systems into a regional and global network to detect zoonotic transmission events, raise the alarm early to enable a swift public health response, and accelerate the development of medical countermeasures.
Like many claims being made about COVID-19, this claim has no evidence base – the origins of COVID-19 remain highly controversial and the WHO’s data demonstrate that pandemics are uncommon, whatever their origin. None of the ‘countermeasures’ have been shown to significantly reduce the spread of COVID-19, which is now globally endemic.
Increased surveillance will naturally identify more ‘potentially dangerous pathogens’, as variants of viruses arise constantly in nature. Consequently, the world faces a never-ending game of seek and ye shall find, with never-ending profits for industry. Formerly once per generation, this industry will make ‘pandemics’ a routine part of life, where rapid fire vaccines are mandated for every new disease or variant that arrives.
Ultimately, this new pandemic fund will help to hook low- and middle-income countries into the growing global pandemic bureaucracy. Greater centralisation of public health will do little to address the genuine health needs of people in these countries. If the pandemic gravy train is allowed to keep growing, the poor will get poorer, and people will die in increasing numbers from more prevalent, preventable diseases. The rich will continue to profit, while fuelling the main driver of ill-health in lower income countries – poverty.
Dr. David Bell is a clinical and public health physician with a PhD in population health and background in internal medicine, modelling and epidemiology of infectious disease. Previously, he was Director of the Global Health Technologies at Intellectual Ventures Global Good Fund in the USA, Programme Head for Malaria and Acute Febrile Disease at FIND in Geneva, and coordinating malaria diagnostics strategy with the World Health Organisation. He is a member of the Executive Committee of PANDA, where this article was first published.
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Not a bad article and it is relatively easily summarised.
A number of wholly spurious “world” organisations have decided to take over the running of our world, organisations such as the WHO and the World Bank. These outfits are peopled largely by nefarious persons who have largely surrendered any allegiances they might have had to their mother countries and now draw incomes from the taxes paid by the people of the world.
Nominally these “world” organisations are funded by grants from national governments and “donations” from wealthy donors such as Bill and Melinda Gates. However, as we all know, governments don’t have any money except that which they filch off their citizens via taxation and the large “donors” make their money from dubious products.
Bill Gates, increasingly tied to the world chemistry industry profits from the sale of dangerous drugs which are invariably paid for by national governments on behalf of their citizens via, yep – taxes. The other large donors, the Big Pharma companies similarly generate their incomes from selling a huge and increasingly dangerous product range in to the nation’s of the world where they receive generous promotion from governments.
The “world” organisations, peopled by wholly unelected and faceless bureaucrats spend their time promoting and dreaming up useless health programmes designed solely to cream a huge and increasing revenue fund from governments, which will so impoverish nation states as to ensure that the population’s of said nation states will be in a consistent state of ill health.
In order to maintain the illusion of care the “world” organisations have bought up all the Main Stream Media outlets who have been given the job of stoking a constant fear of ill health across the world and which can only be assuaged by constant use of the Big Pharma products which will be constantly tinkered with in order to deal with an increasingly poorly world population.
Nation states will be ground out of existence except where they perform a window-dressing function until we arrive at a de facto one world government where effectively ‘we own nothing but are happy.’
As I have commented previously, pandemics are a once in 500 years event and not a once or twice a decade occurrence. Unfortunately, the author of the article appears to swallow the lie that the world must constantly live on tenterhooks for the next “pandemic.” This has to be immediately and firmly put to bed.
In short, unless nation states reassert their sovereignty the end result will be a severely diminished world population, as a result of the uptake of each successive wonder drug, working solely to provide wealth for the elites of Big Pharma and the self-proclaimed “world” organisations.
This is coming at us like a WWII Blitzkrieg and our chances of escape are looking increasingly French like.
The picture isn’t pretty.
I wonder, is it true that people will be able to receive these drugs through the exhalations of other people (among other horrors)? Is there to be no escape?
How would the elites police that?
They can’t. Two ways of mitigation for them.
1) Prophylaxis as detailed above in my reply to Hugh
2) Spike protein least effects anyone with a K26R ACE2 receptor. The spike has been designed to not or only attach with difficulty to the ACE2 receptors of this cohort. The families who are leading all of this have this K26R receptor.
The puppets don’t & they will be discarded once they have served their usefulness.
The toxic spike protein is a racially specific bioweapon designed to kill off the majority of the European population, which is spread throughout Europe, US, Australia, Canada, New Zealand. Asian, African, South American genotypes are also effected but to a lesser degree.
The Military medic who passed on this information stated that interestingly the Finns are one European population who are likely to be less effected. Think back to the 1930s ideal of the perfect Aryan & you have an indication of how far back this has been planned.
Hugh, shedding of the toxic spike protein is already happening. This is all planned. There is no respect for bodily sovereignty.
This is why so many enlightened medics are advocating a prophylaxis of VitD3+K2, Vit C, zinc, a zinc ionophere ie quercetin & ivermectin or black seed oil with N-acetylcysteine thrown in to help with mitrochondrial repair & to degrade any graphene oxide which has made it into your system.
The thinking in these circles is that the bioweapon was seeded in the 2019 flu jabs to then get the bioweapon injection into as many arms as possible through fear. The data hidden in the Pfizer document dump warns against skin to skin contact if pregnant or planning a pregnancy for about 1 month after injection. Why??
We’re at war with these hidden & not so hidden actors who are pushing for a One World Government, the bioweapons for which have long been in the planning.
Thanks for the summary, HP. A bleak outlook indeed. I can’t think of an obvious answer to the increasing madness. I’m not too worried about myself, I’m fairly resilient in myself but I am worried for the youth of today.
I am terrified for the youth.
“Increased surveillance” would expand the market for the proponents, but at the expense of diverting worthwhile resources for normal people, perhaps. Appropriately elected politicians, and the associated governments, need to remember who they are supposed to serve, not the other way round, and put global organisations back in their place.
“Public health”
Has been turned into an oxymoron
I think we’d be better off without it
Going for a walk in the fresh air and sunshine is one of the healthiest things you can do, especially if you take a dog which ensures that you get to chat to other dog owners you meet.
Public health guidelines in Spring 2020 recommended minimising that activity.
Every single NPI introduced under Covid1984 measures was intended to seriously undermine public health.
Every Single One.
I agree with you.
Every single one was experimental as a medical intervention, therefore every single one was unlawful if one consented to not participate in a medical experiment.
Spot on. I have come to know quite a few people via their dogs; they are naturally sociable animals.
Public health is an oxymoron (the Latin contradictio in adiecto describes this even better). Health is necessarily always a property of individuals, at least insofar the kind of health supposed to be maintained with the help of the health system is concerned.
Bill Gates still thinks that viruses can be eliminated by the application of money, c.f. the early viruses that affected his software and the ‘patches’ that were provided. He is so far up his own anus that he cannot tell the differences between humans and machines. His sycophantic operatives were Farrer and Fauci.
Simple answer is to not get involved with anything he funds.
Great quote by Dr Mike Yeadon regarding Covid
‘’I tried to follow the science, but it was simply not there – I then followed the money, that’s where I found the science.’’ Dr Mike Yeadon
That’s a great remark hadn’t heard it before. Thank God for people like Mike Yeadon.
Seconded
Message to the WEF : Don’t worry the people will do it for you.
I recall that some time time back, possibly around about when the development of the first Covid 19 Vaccines were announced, Bojo claimed that the UK would become a world leading vaccine manufacturer (or something of that nature). The MHRA has now evolved from a regulator to an ‘enabler’ for the Pharmaceutical Industry and recently was the first to authorise the new bivalent vaccine. It seems that the UK may well have a prebooked first class ticket on the PPR gravy train?
The City of London is the Banker for the World…. It is at the centre of all of this.
Trying to be optimistic, whilst I have very little trust in Truss, she will be challenged to be even worse than Bunter.
By similar thought process, other than following Pol Pot’s process, it will be challenging to devise a worse approach to public health and wellbeing, than the ludicrous and frankly evil policies of the last two and a half years.
For a start, WEF, World Bank, WHO, Bill and Melinda, CEIF and all the rest should accurately be described as terrorist organisations and banned.
The likes of Whitty, Vallance, Ferguson, Michie, Hunt and Farrar should be arrested and charged for the crimes they committed.
I’m not holding my breath. But anything much less will fail to stop the rot
It seems to me we need to reconstitute a new very competently scientific based government advisory body to replace the majority of clowns in the SAGE committe that contributed to so much damage over Covid. They should have top knowledge and experience in the field they are advising on with members aware of all aspects of the effects of advice they give.They should use not only their own resources but be able to properly investigate alternative advice and be inteligent enough to establish a correct and balanced view of the advice they give. Something that was missing from the last shambles. To output responsibility to external groups like WHO or the new entities being setup to control what governments can do should not be in control of what our government can do, as they all will have bias in one form or another particularly from those who are financing them.
SAGE was the acting government of England and the supposedly elected government just a bit of traditional red tape sometimes stopping it from directly issueing orders to the civil service (optimistic perspective). And the known figureheads were just the tip of the fatberg. In principle, everybody with the right academic titles willing to support its general policy was entitled to contribute to its ‘advice’. This model of government can’t be fixed. It has to be abolished forever.
Those that stated that the whole covid reaction by governments, including throwing out the existing pandemic response plans and the one solution of Vax only while outlawing early treatments, were all painted as conspiracy theory nuts! So Bill Gates traveling the world before the lockdowns, getting private meetings with Prime Ministers was entirely innocent! These are very powerful and well funded entities that see a huge cash cow in rich countries treasuries. Need a cash flow? Create a virus! They certainly have the ability. Our elected hapless politicians are no match for these organizations. The “Deep State” is alive and well and getting larger by the minute.