Last week, amid fanfare from both advocates and opponents of centralisation of future pandemic management, the world continued its unfortunate stumble back to old-fashioned public health fascism. The World Health Assembly (WHA) adopted the package of amendments to the 2005 International Health Regulations (IHR), apparently just hours after a final text had been agreed by its IHR working group. The amendments were watered down from previous proposals under which countries would undertake to place areas of their citizen’s health and human rights under the direction of a single individual in Geneva. Nonetheless, they lay vital groundwork for the further subversion of public health towards a recurrent and lucrative cycle of fearmongering, suppression and coercion.
A day previous, the draft Pandemic Agreement (treaty) had been put back for further negotiation for up to 12 months, undoubtedly a set-back for the World Health Organisation (WHO) Director General and his major private and national donors. Chief among the reasons seems to be a continuing reluctance of African countries (and some others) to roll back healthcare to a pre-WHO colonialist model. This is understandable, but African countries are heavily indebted, especially since the economy-shattering response to COVID-19 that WHO and others convinced, or coerced, them to follow.
It seems likely that a reformed Intergovernmental Negotiation Body (INB) will be more circumspect in the way it manages debate over coming months, and external pressure on countries will be ramped up. There is much at stake, hundreds of billions in profit per pandemic if COVID-19 is a guide. Countries with major Pharma interests take this seriously. So do the World Bank and International Monetary Fund, who have previously signalled strong support.
The key IHR amendments were adopted
The IHR amendments passed by the WHA appear mostly innocuous and have been widely reported as such. They add catch phrases like equity in a context of intent to push commodity-based responses and restrictions of freedom that clearly increase inequity, and emphasise the needs of low-income countries whilst commoditising pandemic responses to the benefit of Western institutions. However, the important gain for the WHO and its backers (almost 80% of the WHO’s work is specified directly by its funders) is the wording that further strengthens surveillance (Annex 1) – the key element on which the rest of the business case around future pandemics hinges. This is adopted, and there is a willing workforce to make it happen.
Surveillance ─ identifying threats early and responding ─ seems an obvious thing to support. Doubtless most country delegations were supporting them on that basis. It is particularly aimed at detecting passage of potential pathogens from animals to humans, as in the current publicity around avian (bird) flu. This seeming obvious public good is why this whole agenda has got so far, and why it is so easy to sell to anyone who has not stopped to think.
The justification for increased surveillance put forward by the WHO is hollow. COVID-19 now looks almost certain to have resulted from gain of function research and a subsequent lab leak. The U.S. congressional hearing currently underway is demonstrating that prominent scientists who wrote letters denigrating the rather obvious lab-origin hypothesis agreed in early 2020 that this was indeed likely. You don’t stop the next Covid-like event, therefore, by spending tens of billions per year on surveillance of wet markets, farms and forest dwellers. You just watch a few labs, improve lab security or, if you are serious, stop gain of function research. The other justification behind the WHO’s agenda, that outbreak risk is increasing, is demonstrated to have been grossly misrepresented by WHO, the World Bank and the G20 High Level Panel. The last major acute natural pandemic, as the WHO generally defines them, was the Spanish Flu over a century ago.
‘Spillover’ of potential pathogens from animals underlay the pre-antibiotic Spanish Flu, and also the probable origin of HIV from a simian (primate) immunodeficiency virus. The main spillover event of HIV is considered likely to have occurred before WHO was inaugurated over 75 years ago. Apart from relatively minor influenza outbreaks (that we already have a surveillance operation to deal with), other zoonotic-spillover outbreaks have had relatively tiny mortality since.
The West African Ebola outbreak, while bad locally, killed fewer people than four days of tuberculosis. The first SARS outbreak in 2003 resulted in just eight hours of tuberculosis deaths. However, funding from tuberculosis management, which deteriorated since the onset of Covid, will be further diverted to this surveillance operation for hypothetical natural threats that have not eventuated in over a century.
Basic nutrition funding also declined during COVID-19, despite the number of children with malnutrition rising. The WHO’s agenda, tightly controlled by its funding, is inevitably shifting from population health to the health of Pharma and laboratory research. The Western research community has simply proven more powerful than the communities that WHO was supposed to serve. Money has a way of salving pricks of conscience, and people need a job.
Building the industry’s foundations
So, to understand what is going on here, the original programme within the proposed Pandemic Agreement and IHR amendments must be understood. A massive surveillance operation will be monitored and directed by the WHO, or a committee under WHO oversight. Its main focus will be the identification of viral variants that spillover from animals to humans (‘zoonotic spillover’) or have potential to do so. Many will be found, because this is nature. Sixty years ago, such outbreaks were hidden in the background of disease noise, but now we have clever technology to distinguish them. The IHR will ramp up the use of these technologies and publicise ‘threats’ ─ and a ‘threat’ is all that is needed to trigger a ‘Pandemic Emergency’ response.
Once a threat is identified, the Director General can recommend a series of measures including border closures, quarantine and mandated medical examinations. These were once considered extreme, but became mainstream in 2020 for a virus that kills mostly chronically-sick people at an average age of about 80. The media, heavily sponsored by Pharma, supports this approach, while social media companies have signalled that proclamations from the WHO shall be considered the dominant, and perhaps only, allowable narrative. An IHR amendment noting the importance of suppressing contrary opinion was among those accepted in Geneva.
The WHO will share samples of newly identified viral variants with its preferred pharmaceutical companies. It will then manage the regulatory passage of their 100-day mRNA vaccines (with taxpayer support) and arrange both the market (freedom through vaccination) and liability protection (through publicly-funded insurance schemes). At least this is the intent ─ as described elsewhere. The delay in the proposed Pandemic Agreement has slowed down parts of the whole, but the 100-day vaccine programme is well underway.
So, the groundwork is laid for the ‘surveillance-declare threat-lockdown-coerced mass vaccination’ approach that has been in brewing as an idea among Pharma-related circles for over a decade, and forms such an unbeatable way of extracting money from others, whilst appearing on a superficial level to be altruistic. There are solid reasons why penalties for fraud are seen by Pharma as just another business expense. There are also reasons why coercion and conflict of interest were once considered incompatible with public health. However, the growing army of public health bureaucrats and researchers now dependent on this model have a strong interest in making it happen and are vocal in their support.
Returning public health to its unedifying roots
COVID-19 proved this paradigm can concentrate wealth and power at an unprecedented rate. The WHO, transformed over recent decades from an international organisation answerable to all Member States to a public-private partnership directly responsive to its major funders, is the obvious tool to bring this together. But the World Bank has its own pandemic fund, the World Economic Forum of private rich people has cemented its influence over national leaders, and the United Nations Secretariat has its coming Summit for the Future in September 2024. The noise in Geneva over the past two weeks constitutes just a part of this behemoth of centralised control and, of course, centralisation of wealth.
Colonialism in the 19th century was built on ‘equity and inclusion’. The colonies needed to be conquered and suppressed so that the benefits of another’s superior civilisation could be foisted on them for their own good. Slavery was sometimes justified in a similar manner. European fascism and the eugenics and technocracy movements of early 20th century North America were based on similar principles. What we are seeing from the international public health establishment is no different, and will be no less nasty in its outcomes. The IHR amendments we have just seen adopted, like the early policies of Mussolini, will be important in building the machine required to run it.
We have just taken a further step down the road to a world built on false claims and the rule of self-declared experts. This is not something that can be ‘won’ but an unending battle against human greed and self-interest that will always be with us. The hard part is to recognise the intent through the mix of fear (keep watching bird flu) and flowery verbiage. When those who advocate a change are the ones who stand to gain at others’ expense, and when they misrepresent the risks of failing to follow their lead, we should start to understand. Greed is not a new problem.
The recent months of negotiations have shown that many involved in the process are recognising potential harms, and a few countries are raising reservations. However, self-interest, coercion and propaganda are a powerful combination. Those pushing medical fascism, and those enchanted by it, are very much in control. A further step down this fascist road is no victory. But if we keep exposing false narratives and refuse to comply with stupidity, there are signs that the worst of the current agenda may yet be derailed. Truth remains the chief enemy of all that is currently being forced on the world by a self-entitled few.
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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“Sweden did particularly well on public debt, limiting its rise as a share of GDP to only 6.2 percentage points – compared to 19 in the U.S. and 22 in Britain.”
Why do you think Swedes having fewer savings or more loans, than people in the US or UK is a good thing?
For every unit of public debt, there is a private financial asset. In fact the private financial asset is what causes the public debt. If that financial asset was spent instead, the public debt would automatically disappear as the spending flow passed tax points.
And given that in all those nations – Sweden, the UK and the US – paying interest on public debt is a policy choice, why does it matter how big savings are. Are savings not a positive thing to hold now?
Public debt is essentially government debt, not individuals’ savings or assets. Government debt is definitely not a desired thing, look at Greece etc. It’s public only in so much as the taxpayers will have to pay it off but it’s the government that causes it with their magic money trees. Having a GDP to debt ratio of over or around 100% like many countries now do is not a healthy position to be in.
How do I go about locating my share of the private financial assets that match my share of the public debt?
Warning MMT idiocy above.
The fundamental problem is that the government issues debt mainly to consume, not to invest. We’ll have to pay for it someway, whether it’s through higher taxes, inflation eroding the value of the nominal portion of government debt, or a default.
All the data shows beyond doubt that the lockdown sceptics were right. The mainstream narrative hasn’t caught up yet but in time it will. Right now there are too many who have staked their reputations on one of the greatest follies in modern history. It will take some time before they will admit to their mistake, quite possibly years, but it is nonetheless inevitable. The truth always comes out in the end. You cannot suppress it forever.
The truth always comes out in the end. Totalitarianism only lasts as long as the lies can be maintained. Once the truth is out, totalitarianism becomes unsustainable.
We must continue to shine light into dark places.
That’s a lovely thought, but does truth always come out in the end? In my experience, no one ever admits they were wrong and the other person was right. Just doesn’t happen. People would rather twist themselves into a pretzel to avoid having to admit that they were ill informed, logically bereft, driven by fear and emboldened by how clever they thought they were. But, hey, I’m ready and willing to be proved wrong. Those ready to apologise for calling us all wrong and worse, please form a neat orderly queue to submit your mea culpas. You’ll excuse me if I doubt any one will turn up.
To quote Charlie Brown, “gee that would be neat”
There is, as yet, no ‘truth’ about the 911 bombings in New York of the World Trade Centre, despite there being more holes in the official narrative than in my aertex underpants, and if that is too recent for you then what about US banks supporting the Nazi war production, the foreknowledge of the Japanese fleet approaching Pearl Harbor, and Truman’s insistence on bombing Hiroshima and Nagasaki despite the Japanese desperately trying to surrender.
It is not in the interest of those culpable for some of the worst crimes in human history to admit the truth unless they were the losers, hence the Nuremberg War Trials.
And when the truth is in danger of coming out there is always the out of court settlement á la Pfizer (other criminal enterprises are also available) with suppression of the details so as not to frighten the horses, so to speak. After all, would anyone in their right mind buy drugs from a convicted criminal who lives beyond the law has a track record of flouting regulations and bribing politicians and regulatory bodies [it is call lobbying but if you or I was to try it we would be convicted of bribery and corruption – and don’t forget the power of the ‘revolving door’ between Big Pharma and the FDA.]
‘The Big Lie’ – Joseph Goebbels 1897 – 1945
“If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it. The lie can be maintained only for such time as the State can shield the people from the political, economic and/or military consequences of the lie. It thus becomes vitally important for the State to use all of its powers to repress dissent, for the truth is the mortal enemy of the lie, and thus by extension, the truth is the greatest enemy of the State.”
“It’s now clear that the Covid doomsayers got Sweden completely wrong. “
It was clear from the start. And they didn’t get it wrong, they lied about it because it made them look bad. It was politics – very dirty, dark politics.
WT*
Please repeat after me
‘THERE WAS NO PANDEMIC’
Pretty obvious I’d say – using the good old fashioned common sense that seems to be as easy to find as rocking horse shit these days.
“since it’s not even clear that lockdowns are a net positive for public health.”. Confused by the lack of certainty in this statement; how can locking people in their homes, depriving them of exercise, depriving them of social interaction, increasing dependencies on alcohol, increasing weight gain, increasing stress, destroying relationships, depriving children of education, forcing millions into poverty, creating an NHS backlog so big it’ll take a decade to recover from etc, ever be seen as anything other than a 100% net negative for public health? You’d have to be unhinged to even consider this.
Sweden has always been the beacon for others to follow suit which they didn’t.
It’s a shame Sweden changed their Prime Minister recently who brought in unnecessary stricter controls.
Unfortunately that probably means that Swedish millionaires were less enriched than UK.
Ireland saw a 78 point drop in Investment, whatever that means. However in comparison to other countries, its pretty stark.
What is going on there then?
Global agreement on Corporation Tax.
I am saying this since the start, that the rise in public debt has to be subtracted from the headline GDP and growth numbers to assess the true economic damage in a country.
And I didn’t need an economics professorship to come at that not-at-all -perhaps conclusion.
The conspiracy theorist in me thinks that they were allowed more leeway and freedom and less economic and societal damage, because they were already so communitarian and on board of the no cash/digital ID agenda.
They probably got a Greta bonus as well.
They’ve probably been too successful though, hence the more recent, totally pointless, restrictions etc..
It’s certainly an interesting question. On paper, at the start of the pandemic Sweden likely wouldn’t have been among the top picks if you had to guess which EU country would buck the trend of authoritarian lockdowns.
The state is fairly large in Sweden and flexes its muscles more often than in other countries, as anyone who has navigated buying alcohol through Systembolaget would have experienced. Digital ID through “Bank ID” (no attempt to even try and disassociate it from the banking system) has been ubiquitous here for a while now.
I have tried to pinpoint how it happened that Sweden was the one sane country and I think there is a bit of luck mixed in with a sensible government structure and a couple of additional factors.
Luck in that Tegnell was the right man in charge as State Epidemiologist at the right time. There are certainly other prominent scientists here who would have gleefully taken the country down a completely different route and would have had the authority to do so.
Structure in that early on, the coupling of health and politics was largely avoided (less so in recent times unfortunately) and this allowed Tegnell to stick to known epidemiological principles without the interference of ministers political point scoring or ass covering.
Additional factors would perhaps be a sense of Swedish exceptionalism that allowed the public to be proud that they were flying the anti-lockdown flag alone and thus broadly supported the light touch measures. Perhaps also, of all the EU countries, Sweden has historically had a frosty diplomatic relationship with China and possibly within government key people didn’t buy the initial Wuhan narrative. Who knows for sure though.
I see the temptation to view the situation through the conspiracy lens regarding the existing digital framework but I think that is hopefully incorrect.
Italian Teacher In CRITICAL CONDITION After Setting Himself on Fire In Protest Of The Country’s Vaccine Mandate
https://thecovidworld.com/italian-teacher-in-critical-condition-after-setting-himself-on-fire-in-protest-of-the-countrys-vaccine-mandate/
Could this be the start of the European Spring
Shame China figures were not included by The Economist.
No one knows what they are.
Why are people still talking about Sweden as not locking down? Other than the Spring of 2020, it hasn’t been much better than it’s neighbors in terms of restrictions.
Huge price of pandemic is laid bare as taxpayer faces £10BILLION hit on PPE deals – including £115m for ports storage because we had too much – while £50m of ‘unsuitable’ medical kit and £350k of fruit and veg for schools was just thrown away
All together now:NEVER LET THE TRUTH SPOIL A GOOD STORY!!!
This is a very bizarre list. Slovenia and Chile – really?
& the Economist criteria are odd. Not unemployment or inflation? The GDP scores are presumably 2020 & 2021. The IMF predictions for 2022 are for the UK to be the fastest growing economy in the G7 – due to our opening up.
The very latest figs show Germany 2% below pre pandemic level and UK 1.5% above.
Worth bearing in mind that despite showering money during the pandemic the UK still quite a low level of debt-GDP in the G7. Much lower than: Japan, Italy, France & the US.
But higher than Germany and I think Canada.
GDP is one of the bigger nonsense stats there is.
As with Florida, it was not incumbent for Sweden to prove their approach was better but simply that it was not significantly worse. They have proved this in spades.
Remember that those who smeared Anders Tegnell as ‘far right’ are the same fools who fulsomely support Trudeau.
Sweden failed because there were a few countries that had a lower death count. That’s how success is determined these days isn’t it?
If you’re looking for hope from Scandinavia then I suggest you look elsewhere. I lived there and they are fine people with fine countries. Solzhenitsyn said that there is good and bad in all people but he never met a bad Estonian. This is how I feel about the Nordic folk. On an intellectual level they look to us for guidance, the best of them. Anglophiles who thought that we kept alive a nobler tradition. The best hope does lie in the English language. Never allow the fine old English art of taking the piss to disappear.
If science can’t be questioned it’s not science anymore. It’s propaganda. They want to rip on people for taking Ivermectin. I researched and saw the evidence on the internet. Research papers are on the internet for those who wants to see. Top respected world doctors are being under defamation by MSM and vaccine manufacturers. I won’t back down recommeding IVM. You can get yours by visiting https://ivmpharmacy.com
Ooops pressed the wrong button sorry
Can we please sack every member of SAGE and PHE and recruit Anders Tegnell.
I find it absolutely astonishing that we’re not looking into how mortality can somehow drop by 8%. That’s a phenomenal figure, that can’t just be handwaved away as a blip.
I’d really appreciate seeing an analysis of who didn’t die, and why. Is this something that we can bottle, or learn from?
Thanks to Sweden for being a reference point for sanity in the insane asylum that was most of the western world. A reference point for future histories.