Sarah awoke in pain again, alone on the mat, still reeking from the night before. She had not dreamed, not for months, that she could remember. Just waking with the pain inside her, the knowledge of her abandonment in the crowded house, and the emptiness that had been her future.
When the school closed ‘because of Covid’, Sarah’s father said it would just be a week, and she could help with the harvest. The fruit must be picked, anyway. When the harvest was coming in, the markets closed and it rotted in the store at the back of the house. The broker had forwarded the costs of her little brother’s medicines when he went to hospital three months earlier, and they were to pay him with the crop. Sarah’s father explained that college was no longer an option, and she did what she had to do. The man was old and she hated the smell and sight of him, but he had paid off the broker, and now Sarah owed him.
About 20 years ago, increased funding began flowing into international public health. This came mainly from a few private sources, people who had grown up in wealthy countries and made their fortunes from computer software. Their investment levered further funding from corporations and governments through ‘public-private partnerships’, adding public taxes to the private funder’s priorities. New foundations and non-government organisations paid people in poor countries to work on areas of public health that interested wealthy people. The World Health Organisation (WHO), formerly funded by countries as a technical agency, gained new ‘specified’ funding from these sources, co-opting the WHO’s vast network and influence to further the priorities of investors.
This new funding was a win-win for international public health (or ‘global health’). We got larger salaries and lots of travel, leading wealthier and more interesting lives. Improved resources for disease programs such as malaria and tuberculosis reduced avoidable sickness and death. Behind this, a few very rich people were deciding the health priorities of billions. They were not enabled by those whose health was at stake, but by those whose careers were at stake. Supporting the centralisation of public health has become standard, whilst simultaneously arguing for its decentralisation. Job security can paper over a lot of ills.
Private sponsors, and the pharma companies in whom they invest, give money for a reason. Corporations have a responsibility to their shareholders to maximise profits. Investors look to increase their own wealth. Where health outcomes seem more measurable, such as X number of vaccines saving Y number of children’s lives, media and public attention also helps build a positive image. Improved sanitation and community health worker support may be a better way to stop children dying, but the public don’t get excited by clinics and toilets.
Global health divided into two schools. One side continued to promote public health orthodoxy, prioritising high-burden diseases, local control and the importance of local economies to health. The 2019 WHO recommendations for pandemic influenza, for instance, point out that border closures, confinement of healthy people, and business closures should never be considered, as they would provide minimal benefit, further impoverish the poor, and cause net harm. The other school, far better funded, has been building a narrative that undefined health emergencies were an existential threat. They claim that these were best addressed by centralising control, confining populations and imposing externally mandated responses such as mass vaccination.
COVID-19 gave the opportunity for the new public health to prove itself. The response demonstrated that population control combined with mass injection could successfully concentrate wealth, whilst ensuring greater overall poverty and transmission of higher-burden diseases. Human rights could be put aside, the importance of education and functioning local economies could be ignored. It also proved that, when salaries and careers depend on it, most public health staff will comply, however contrary their orders may be to prior understanding or ethics. This has been demonstrated similarly in past generations. A whole new pandemic industry is now being built on this foundation.
As WHO and prominent foundations have noted, education was a path for girls and women in low-income countries to escape the cycle of poverty and child marriage. Millions of young women in such situations have no access to medical care without a husband’s consent, and consequently little access to contraception or basic gynaecological care for the harm done to young girls who are raped and abused. They essentially become slaves to their husband, who is usually far older. This is not new; UN agencies call it “an appalling violation of human rights and robs girls of their education, health and long-term prospects”. Those who ran the Covid response, including WHO and other UN agencies, made a conscious decision to force millions more women into this situation. This is important to understand.
Sarah had heard that people in rich countries have meetings to help people like her. She was taught in school about the Government’s efforts to stop female genital mutilation, or ‘FGM’ as the ritual her mother had endured was now called. Some people had given her class laptops because education was the key to making the family, the community and the country stronger. This would allow them to have less babies, more money and better health. This had made sense to Sarah and the world had looked brighter.
Sarah doesn’t see the other students much now. She heard the school had reopened, but most of her old classmates were pregnant or had babies, and like her they knew this promised world was not for them. She knows they are not stupid – they know the virus was mostly a problem for old people, and that the same rich people who once paid for the school computers made lots of money from the vaccines they insisted everyone have for the ‘old people’s virus’. They knew the white people who had come to the clinic were very rich in their own countries, although they tried to look poor in the village. But they had never realised that it was all a lie. Theirs had not been irrational dreams. Even the broker who lent the money to her father had morals and went to the mosque on Fridays.
While a conference in Geneva applauded its next speaker, another spasm of pain cut into Sarah in another and simpler room. This spasm seemed deeper. She could not think about these things anymore. Soon he would come back and she did not know how she would prepare his meal. Sarah knew a lot, about a lot of people, but that didn’t help.
Sarah is not a real person, but she is also one of very many who we have abandoned and betrayed over the past few years. UNICEF estimates that up to 10 million additional girls will suffer in this way because of what was done in response to COVID-19.
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 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.
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Looking at the polls it seems that increasing numbers of people are waking up to the fact that anything that Labour touches is toxic. Economy, energy, education, immigration etc. They literally haven’t put a foot right.
Just wait until the formal recession hits and unemployment shoots up. Labour will then be sub 20% in the polls. Reform will be the main beneficiaries.
Reform already are.
The only question remaining is how to get the Student Union party out of Westminster. And make sure we destroy the Tory party on the way
Don’t forget Whitehall, the deep state that you can’t vote out. Doomwatch is on tonight on TPTV. It often reminds me of Yes Minster the way they clash with officials.
I think the Tories are doing a good job of destroying themselves – as are Labour.
That this government would be nothing but Wokezilla on the rampage was the plan from the start. This mirrors a political plan brought forward to the German Greens by a so-called independent journalist when it became clear that their governing didn’t exactly make them more popular with the electorate (before the coalition collapsed): You have until the next election to ram through whatever of your policies you can. Make sure to use this chance to save a planet!
It’s clear to me that this government does not have a constructive plan at all: just a laundry list of destructive policies compiled by immature, intellectually and morally bereft, grievance apparatchiks. In a sane world they would be jailed for what they are doing.
bankruptcy beckons
16 year olds to get vote ? Did I get this right ?
But… reports from both sides of the Atlantic say that Gen Z – those under age 25, have turned away from the Left towards conservatism.
Giving 16 year olds the vote, might not produce the outcome the Labour-loonies hope.
Contrast this:
Now repeat with rejuvenated faith: Two-tier justice is nothing but right-wing conspiracy theory!
In case your faith in that wasn’t rejuvenated, a Crown Prosecution Service near you might have to have an interview with you.
But the marine is white, and male he needs to check his privilege. Whereas Mr Rudakaba or whatever is a diverse and beautiful but opressed man who was just expressing his frustration with the cultural insensitivity shown to him by those little girls dancing to Taylor Swift.
As our betters tell us we are bad, white colonialists who must pay for the colour of our skin and our ancestors.
Laurie’s reference to those who pleaded guilty to their on-line ‘offences’ got me thinking. I’m just wondering whether the PM’s references to them as ‘criminals’ before a trial may have had a subliminal effect on their plea. Just a thought.
they pled guilty because to do otherwise they could have been held on remand in jail for months or even years awaiting trial, this was how the Government and judiciary got away with what they did. including having the blood on their hands of the man who killed himself.
But as they have no conscience they don’t let it worry them
What if his language is unrelentingly negative?
“So what are you in for then?”
“For unrelentingly negative language.”
“Didn’t know that was a crime.”
“Nor did I, until the police came to arrest me…”
In an attempt to appear reasonable, stating that he was speaking up against illegal immigrants only and not the legal ones invites the idea that protesting against legal migration and being very negative about it is wrong and not to be allowed.
But who are we kidding. There really is no free speech in Britain. It’s an island of serfs who didn’t know they were serfs but some are beginning to realise they are.
“Unrelenting negative” = free speech.
is Buffy paying costs?
Is Buffy short for Buffoon, I wonder.
Well, she’s run away from Twitter in the last couple of months, so there’s that.
I expect Buffy Williams will be resigning.
Can the police sue the CPS for wasting police time? Can Jamie get compensation for wasting his time and damaging his mental health given that is all the rage these days. I understand that the elite were using remand as a punishment – look at what the DemoTwats did to the J6 political prisoners given that many were still on remand when Donald released them. However, they should have gone before a jury of their peers.
HURRAH FOR FSU
And well done that man. The f***ing state of things, it makes me sick.
Well stood up for yourself, Royal Marine.
Meanwhile Sir Two Tier bleats on about the far right from a position of cognitive bias well toward the far left.
Human rights lawyer and former DDP who cares not one jot for the human rights of legitimate protestors leaned on by Plod to plead guilty to avoid months on remand.
Not for nothing is the law known as the last refuge of the scoundrel.
Thank you so much Free Speech Union team. You’re our guardian angels.
Excellent. It shows the value of juries – “we the people” have had enough of this nonsense.
This is fantastic news! Well done to the Free Speech Union lawyers and all involved in the fight to obtain justice for that veteran warrior.
It is salutary to think that if Lord Toby hadn’t founded The Free Speech Union, that former Royal Marine Jamie Michael wouldn’t have had a chance against the Leftist/ Globalist/ Marxist “Common Purpose” Subversives pervading our entire government, society and legal system.
It’s scandalous that many protestors were induced to plead guilty. It’s not dissimilar to the plea bargains system which puts so many people in gaol in the USA.
You should be able to plead not guilty without an adverse effect on your sentence
Well done to the Jury who found him Not Guilty.