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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Actually pretty funny really. I don’t think he should be punished for private messages between friends.
He should be punished for being a slimy, hypocritical, corrupt bastard though.
I disagree with the personal messages bit,
someone in his position should be painfully aware than no comments on the Internet are personal anymore, saying anything online or on here is not personal, whisper it in someone’s ear if you want it to be personal.
At least now his future job,if any,will be emptying bins not joking about them!
Quite agree, Dings. Nothing’s personal once it’s out there on t’internet. If these had been posted on social media then things might have been even worse for him. As you say, say what you like among friends in person or on a call, but politicians should be held to a higher standard than other people. The guy comes across as a Grade A dickwad. A nasty pasty indeed. Just one among many, though, when it comes to that godawful party.
And his penalty…six months on the back benches for being naughty and then a nice, quiet sinecure. Or a quick shunt to the Lords.
He needs pelted with rotten cabbages by his neighbours and slung in the back of a bin lorry, off to the land fill. Arse-weasel.
And the loss of salary, with more to come if he’s expelled from the Party and won’t be elected again at the next GE.
Nah! They wil find him a quango job. His future iis assured just as they did for Stephen Byers.
“I’ve served the Labour Party all my life”
What he really meant was…
“I’ve taken the piss and filled my pockets all my life.”
Oh yes punish a man who utters a few words, yes let’s punish him. Meanwhile your current gov’t removed winter fuel allowance to thousands of elderly, placed vat on private school fees, slapped inheritance tax on the people who grow our food, and wrote an online safety act to prevent you from free speech, jailed people for writing something on social media. But yes, by all means let’s punish the mp who uttered a few words. The Uk is a joke.
Malcolm Tucker MP
Except he’s worse than Tucker, he was only fictional.
And Sir Two-Tier has the sheer blind effrontery to bleat on about the Far Right.
Pure comedy gold. Cosmic Political Sketchwriter on good form.
Most insightful thing to come out of Labour Head Office since Not Flash Gordon and the recording device left on in the official limo outside the loyal Labour voter’s house.
Wonderful to see a madleft lump of slime slithering out into the daylight.
Yes, he needs maximum humiliation, that one. I hope he gets lots of flack from the public as a result of this. He might want to leave the house wearing a disguise or lay low for a while..until the next Labour scandal takes the heat off him.
Ladies and gentlemen: what this episode reveals is the true, unfiltered nature of the Left.
The views of this guy are not an anomaly, not specific to one rogue individual, not some silly careless remark after a beer too many.
No. These are the views of most leftist politicians.
If anybody thinks that Marx, Lenin, Mao gave a monkey’s about the working class, just look at the fruits of their actions.
I have it on extremely good authority that Debbie Abrahams MP, Oldham East and Saddleworth, who relies on the muslim vote for her election and particularly the muslim bloc postal vote actually detests the people she relies on for her life of luxury.
Yes we can see how Union members attack people as ‘Far Right’, who want control of our boarders.
And which is the Nasty Party again?
Well here’s an ‘interesting’ party;
”Pro Islam party launched in Birmingham
Notorious Islamic Lawyer Akhmed Yakoob and ‘muslim activist’ Shakeel Afsar have started the INDEPENDENT CANDIATE ALLIANCE
– They will be targeting the Muslim Bloc vote
– Expect Labour to start pandering heavily to keep them on side”
https://x.com/Basil_TGMD/status/1888305927746437423
This will drive the Anti-white Party (the Labour Party) into paroxysms of anger, fear, and despair. And our anti-white government will rush to introduce Muslim blasphemy laws, and to demonise patriots and supporters of free-speech.
Already happening and will inevitably get worse.
Indeed. Further to my post on loonies running around with knives and chasing girls in Reading the other day, this one’s been caught. By members of the public, I hasten to add. Looks like your typical Labour voter, if not then one of these Muslim independents will welcome him, I’m sure;
”You may have seen my story about an armed man allegedly chasing after women and girls in Reading.
He was caught by two locals with a massive knife on him and is in custody.”
https://x.com/DaveAtherton20/status/1888543090740191736
While it would actually help them if they criticised them more, and ended the Woke mind virus. But that won’t happen.
The muslim vote has decided to cut out the middle man ie Labour and take the gravy for themselves. It’s already happened in Oldham. I posted on here months ago that if there is another GE the Labour Party will be toast because they are loosing the muzzie vote in vast numbers.
I’m guessing that’s why they’ve gone ‘warp speed’ in the brown-nosing department with all of this talk of ”Islamophobia” and further censorship. Reminds me of this;
https://x.com/dsisme48/status/1888546985302536409
I wonder how common is this disdain for vaters in MPs of all stripes. It has floated to the top in this case, as it did with G Brown and the “bigotted woman”.
Massive given they only have to be nice to us once every 5 years. Note how completely detached the vast majority are from the views of the ordinary people – you know, the Far Right. Probably 90% favour doing nothing on immigration for a start.
True and we sometimes forget that the Muslim vote is made up of different who hate each other as well.
‘start pandering’? They have been doing that for years as they ignore the rape gangs.
Seems to me there are more grounds to prosecute this man tan the hundreds (?) wo were persecuted for posting about the murder, many of whom turned out to be right and the government’s spin was wrong.
He is completely safe as they dare not hold a bye bye election. They must be dreading any of their MPs dying, especially in a Red Wall seat.
So that makes three ministers gone from the Student Union government already.
A YouTuber who made humorous if impolite comments like the lovely Mr Andrew Gwynne has made (but in his case about our Great Leader) was arrested last week and held In a Police cell overnight. I presume Mr Gwynne will be likewise arrested later tonight….
He is a nasty piece of work. I hope he never comes back to public life.
It was Judge Tan Ikram who boasted of imprisoning those policemen for exactly this. Will this case go to court, with T.I. as the judge? Don’t hold your breath.
This news has been a bit of a shock to me – I don’t mean about most MPs being two-faced, lying, greedy, self-serving slime bags – but that it is about him. I always thought he was a decent, honest, hardworking individual, one of the rare gems, who frequent the halls of Westminster. He is not. He is a great disappointment. I am also disappointed with myself. I thought I was a better judge of character in identifying such folk but I have failed myself.
My first reaction to these WhatsApp messages is how unbelievably childish…. How ignorant not to know WhatsApp isn’t safe too. What kind of calibre are these people given power over us? A grown man pissing about on his phone about old people and their dustbins says it all.
I smiled at a couple of the remarks. It’s not appropriate for an MP to express them in a shareable medium, so I suppose the punishment was warranted, but I don’t want my ‘side’ becoming as humourless as the other.
Oh dear, no one dose has uttered the few words this man did. He is the drip, drip, feature of tge news the past few days. Don’t worry britain. Rome is burning but your best and brightest are very busy crucifying a Mp who uttered a few words. The country is a shambles.