Much has been written on the current proposals putting the World Health Organisation (WHO) front and centre of future pandemics responses. With billions of dollars in careers, salaries and research funding on the table, it is difficult for many to be objective. However, there are fundamentals here that everyone with public health training should agree upon. Most others, if they take time to consider, would also agree. Including, when divorced from party politicking and soundbites, most politicians.
So here, from an orthodox public health standpoint, are some problems with the proposals on pandemics to be voted on at the World Health Assembly at the end of this month.
Unfounded messaging on urgency
The Pandemic Agreement (treaty) and IHR amendments have been promoted based on claims of a rapidly increasing risk of pandemics. In fact, pandemics pose an “existential threat” (i.e., one that may end our existence) according to the G20’s High Level Independent Panel in 2022. However, the increase in reported natural outbreaks on which WHO, the World Bank, G20 and others based these claims is shown to be unfounded in a recent analysis from the U.K.’s University of Leeds. The main database on which most outbreak analyses rely, the GIDEON database, shows a reduction in natural outbreaks and resultant mortality over the past 10 to 15 years, with the prior increase between 1960 and 2000 fully consistent with the development of the technologies necessary to detect and record such outbreaks: PCR, antigen and serology tests and genetic sequencing.
The WHO does not refute this, but simply ignores it. Nipah viruses, for example, only ’emerged’ in the late 1990s when we found ways to actually detect them. Now we can readily distinguish new variants of coronavirus to promote uptake of pharmaceuticals. The risk does not change by detecting them, we just change the ability to notice them. We also have the ability to modify viruses to make them worse – this is a relatively new problem. But do we really want an organisation influenced by China, with North Korea on its executive board (insert your favourite geopolitical rivals), to manage a future bioweapons emergency?
Irrespective of growing evidence that COVID-19 was not a natural phenomenon, modelling that the World Bank quotes as suggesting a three times increase in outbreaks over the next decade actually predicts that a Covid-like event will recur less than once per century. Diseases that WHO uses to suggest an increase in outbreaks over the past 20 years, including cholera, plague, yellow fever and influenza variants were orders of magnitude worse in past centuries.
This all makes it doubly confusing that WHO is breaking its own legal requirements in order to push through a vote without Member States having time to properly review implications of the proposals. The urgency must be for reasons other than public health need. Others can speculate why, but we are all human and all have egos to protect, even when preparing legally-binding international agreements.
Low relative burden
The burden (e.g. death rate or life years lost) of acute outbreaks is a fraction of overall disease burden, far lower than many endemic infectious diseases such as malaria, HIV and tuberculosis, and a rising burden of non-communicable disease. Few natural outbreaks over the past 20 years have resulted in more than 1,000 deaths – or eight hours of tuberculosis mortality. Higher burden diseases should dominate public health priorities, however dull or unprofitable they may seem.
With the development of modern antibiotics, major outbreaks from the big scourges of the past like Plague and typhus ceased to occur. Though influenza is caused by a virus, most deaths are also due to secondary bacterial infections. Hence, we have not seen a repeat of the Spanish Flu in over a century. We are better at healthcare than we used to be and have improved nutrition (generally) and sanitation. Widespread travel has eliminated the risks of large immunologically-naive populations, making our species more immunologically resilient. Cancer and heart disease may be increasing, but infectious diseases overall are declining. So where should we focus?
Lack of evidence base
Investment in public health requires both evidence (or high likelihood) that the investment will improve outcomes and an absence of significant harm. The WHO has demonstrated neither with its proposed interventions. Neither has anyone else. The lockdown and mass vaccination strategy promoted for COVID-19 resulted in a disease that predominantly affects elderly sick people leading to 15 million excess deaths, even increasing mortality in young adults. In past acute respiratory outbreaks things got better after one or perhaps two seasons, but with COVID-19 excess mortality persisted.
Within public health, this would normally mean we check whether the response caused the problem. Especially if it’s a new type of response, and if past understanding of disease management predicted that it would. This is more reliable than pretending that past knowledge did not exist. So again, WHO (and other public-private partnerships) are not following orthodox public health, but something quite different.
Centralisation for a highly heterogenous problem
Twenty-five years ago, before private investors became so interested in public health, it was accepted that decentralisation was sensible. Providing local control to communities who could then prioritise and tailor health interventions themselves can provide better outcomes. COVID-19 underlined the importance of this, showing how uneven the impact of an outbreak is, determined by population age, density, health status and many other factors. To paraphrase the WHO, “most people are safe, even when some are not”.
However, for reasons that remain unclear to many, the WHO decided that the response for a Toronto aged care resident and a young mother in a Malawian village should be essentially the same – stop them meeting family and working, then inject them with the same patented chemicals. WHO’s private sponsors, and even the two largest donor countries with their strong pharmaceutical sectors, agreed with this approach. So too did the people paid to implement it. It was really only history, commonsense and public health ethics that stood in the way, and they proved much more malleable.
Absence of prevention strategies through host resilience
The WHO IHR amendments and Pandemic Agreement are all about detection, lockdowns and mass vaccination. This may be good if we had nothing else. Fortunately, we do. Sanitation, better nutrition, antibiotics and better housing halted the great scourges of the past. An article in the journal Nature in 2023 suggested that just getting vitamin D at the right level may have cut COVID-19 mortality by a third. We already knew this, and can speculate on why it became controversial. It’s really basic immunology.
Nonetheless, nowhere within the proposed $30-plus billion annual budget is any genuine community and individual resilience supported. Imagine putting a few billion dollars more into nutrition and sanitation. Not only would you dramatically reduce mortality from occasional outbreaks, but more common infectious diseases and metabolic diseases such as diabetes and obesity would also go down. This would actually reduce the need for pharmaceuticals. Imagine a pharmaceutical company, or investor, promoting that? It would be great for public health, but a suicidal business approach.
Conflicts of Interest
All of which brings us, obviously, to conflicts of interest. The WHO, when formed, was essentially funded by countries through a core budget, to address high-burden diseases on country request. Now, with 80% of its use of funds specified directly by the funder, its approach is different. If that Malawian village could stump up the tens of millions for a program, he would get what he asks for. But Malawian villages don’t have that money; Western countries, Pharma and software moguls do.
Most people on earth would grasp that concept far better than a public health workforce heavily incentivised to think otherwise. This is why the World Health Assembly exists and has the ability to steer WHO in directions that don’t harm its members’ populations. In its former incarnation, WHO considered conflict of interest to be a bad thing. Now, it works with its private and corporate sponsors, within the limits set by its member states, to mould the world to the liking of those sponsors.
The question before member states
To summarise, while it’s sensible to prepare for outbreaks and pandemics, it’s even more sensible to improve health. This involves directing resources to where the problems are, and using them in a way that does more good than harm. When people’s salaries and careers become dependent on changing reality, reality gets warped. The new pandemic proposals are very warped. They are a business strategy, not a public health strategy. It is the business of wealth concentration and colonialism – as old as humanity itself.
The only real question is whether the majority of the member states of the World Health Assembly, in their voting later this month, wish to promote a lucrative but rather amoral business strategy, or the interests of their people.
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 Senior Scholar at the Brownstone Institute.
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Yes. We’re living longer and something has to get every one of us eventually. Better cancer or heart disease than dementia in my opinion.
Encouraging people to look after themselves and reminding them that something is going to kill them someday (i.e. not patronising them) just doesn’t employ enough people, does it? What would all the experts do with themselves?
Excellent article
Thanks to the author and to DS for publishing
You beat me to it tof.
What is so thought provoking in this article is that Dr. Bell inverts the reasoning behind the alleged Pandemic Preparedness Treaty and the International Health Regulations but not as is today’s norm, in an Orwellian manner, he simply examines the case from a business perspective. So, from a business perspective and the WHO’s ‘righteous’ viewpoint another ‘pandemic’ is a business necessity.
How convenient.
Indeed
There are various dark interests who can mutually benefit one another
Anyone else find they are no longer getting notifications having ticked the bell icon on a post to be told about replies to their comments?
I am back on daily sign ins and sometimes twice daily so possibly there are some glitches. Perhaps Ian could have a look.
Public institutions are all launched cloaked with high minded ideas about public benefit and they all end up being taken over and directed towards narrower special interests.
The WHO now serves the pharma industry to sell vaccines.
Public drug regulators and medical standards bodies serve the pharma industry to sell drugs
Financial regulators serve financial corporations to help make them money.
Environmental agencies serve the green energy industry to take down oil and gas and replace it with technology produced by the green energy industry.
Food regulators serve giant food corporations to create standards and regulations that smother smaller producers.
Etc, etc.
A good article. It’s correct in as much as the more you look, the more you find.
Under ‘Low relative burden’, while I appreciate the history of immunologically-naive populations being wiped out by immigrants, I’m not totally convinced that widespread travel reduces the risks, having had an illness on a business trip to a different environment (Karachi in the Summer). Mind you, Brixham might be a bit like that this week!
Having read Gordon Brown’s endorsement of the WHO pandemic treaty I decided to read the original text. I had read and was concerned about the previous draft that appeared to give the WHO the powers to declare a pandemic or warn of a potential pandemic whenever it wanted, and then to use that declaration to instruct member states to lockdown and share all research and patented vaccines developed. This bypassed the democratic process of member states. The draft was full of sentences than bound member states to follow WHO instructions, and gave WHO the power to discriminate between countries based on social and economic factors. An altogether shocking proposal.
The 29 pages of the draft released on 24 March 2024 that I have just read appears to be far more reasonable. I’ve not spotted anything that obviously undermines the democratic powers of the member states, and the articles seem sensible. It even includes provisions in article 27 for member states to place reservations where they don’t wish to sign up to specific articles.
I am instinctively mistrustful of unelected bodies and maybe there is no need for a revised pandemic treaty, even though this one is much improved. Improving public health is definitely a good move, though as I’m sure our main risk stems from gain of function research it would seem sensible to work to address that as well.
It will be used by member states as a smokescreen to hide behind
The biggest threats I see to public health come from the Medical Industrial Complex and warmongering states, and from Nut Zero, anti humanism, the religion of Woke
I can’t disagree with you there
So now look at the Covid Scam scenario:
The WHO declares that there is a new virus “of concern” and strongly recommends to the Governments of member nations that they lockdown whilst a new mRNA “vaccine” is cobbled together with minimal testing and is rushed into production.
The Governments will do as “advised” using the WHO’s recommendation as justification ….. ie not our fault, Guv, the WHO made us do it.
In less than 100 days (operation Warp-Speed) Big Pharma produces a new mRNA “vaccine” and the WHO declares it is SAFE and EFFECTIVE. It recommends that everyone be jabbed with this new product and, if they aren’t, they must be isolated from society.
The Government will do as “advised” using the WHO’s recommendation as justification ….. ie not our fault, Guv, the WHO made us do it.
Oh, and some of those Governments (ie the UK) expect to make a great deal of money on the back of the WHO’s “advice” because they’ve entered into a contract with ModeRNA to produce the “vaccines.”
No conflict of interest …. and most definitely not their fault, Guv. Only following “expert” advice.
I agree it has been watered down considerably. Human rights have been put back in, however a few days ago the IHR negotiating team talked about ‘equity’ once again.
I have a few major concerns:
How much will this all cost us?
Will governments have enough backbone to go against this supranational body?
With its current track record the WHO does not fill me with confidence.
Public Health Medicine did a lot of good in the 19th century but in the 21st century it does little good and has become a serious threat to freedom and prosperity. Overwhelmingly, the discipline is populated by authoritarian paternalists determined to impose their preferences on the rest of us. The UK government ought to withdraw the country from the World Health Organisation and resist further erosion of its national sovereignty. It will not do this. The slide into tyranny will continue.
A very powerful article, thank you.
The WHO (and Gates) intended power-grab is really frightening. They are seeking the power to control the entire world, using exaggerated health-scares as the justification.
The British Establishment seems quite happy to sign up to this. (Gordon Brown, on behalf of Labour, wrote a patronising piece in the DT yesterday informing “the peasants” why the ability to control our lives should be passed to Tedros and the likes of Jeremy Ferrar and Susan Michie who behaved so appalling during the Covid scamdemic.)
There is no justification for this transfer of power and personally, I hope Gates has a very swift appointment with his Maker.
They’ve have been destroying Africa and Africans for decades . All they want are minerals and precious metals ! Even their own leaders sell their own people