Let me begin with a declaration of interest. I’m cross with Microsoft, Bill Gates’s cash-cow. Here’s why. I need Word, PowerPoint, Excel and Teams, so I subscribe to Microsoft’s Family 365. I’d rather buy outright, but that’s no longer practicable for computer programmes, so I rent. It costs me £80 annually, and all went well for years. Then, suddenly, I found it infected with an “AI assistant” called “Copilot”. Like a wasp at a September picnic, this buzzed around, determined to involve itself in whatever I was doing. I tried to kill it but managed only to wound. It lingers on the ribbon atop the screen. Then I read Sam Leith’s UnHerd article warning that my Microsoft subscription rate would rise by £25 to cover this unwanted pestilence. Exactly as Leith wrote, I found I had to faff about to “downgrade” to Classic 365, which omits Copilot and remains at £80 annually “for a limited period”. Until I am coerced into acquiescence, I suspect.
I include this preamble to illustrate the shysters we face. You’ll see the connection later. By what right can Bill Gates’s cash-cow ‘upgrade’ my account without asking? No doubt there is a clause in the small print. Can they install a wasps’ nest in my loft?
And so to Trump’s withdrawal from the WHO. Whether he legally can do this by executive order remains to be seen. There are legal challenges. Because the US joined the WHO by Act of Congress, an Act may be needed to leave. If so, good luck.
The WHO did good in the past. It led the vaccination campaigns against smallpox, now eradicated, and polio, nearly eradicated. For many years it honourably focused on local community-led initiatives to improve health, often by improving sanitation. Unfortunately, even by 1998, the BBC noted that it was a “by-word for politicking and financial mismanagement”. Latterly it has interested itself in the preoccupations of the progressive Left, as with a guideline on the “Health of trans- and gender-diverse people”.
It failed during the Covid pandemic. It could not bring itself to say that it was first warned by Taiwan, a country excluded under Chinese pressure. Like the UK, it next abandoned its reasonable ‘Keep calm and carry on’ plan, advocating the very lockdowns, social distancing, border closures and universal masking that it had previously eschewed. Its investigation into the virus’s origins was infamous. Panel members had to be agreed with China. Among those from the USA, only Peter Daszak – with huge conflicts of interest – was approved. Unsurprisingly, it concluded that the virus likely came from wildlife, or possibly frozen food. A lab leak was “extremely unlikely”. This dismissal was odd given that the pandemic began in a city far from the bat caves, but which hosted an institute manipulating coronavirus genomes. The report was so ridiculously one-sided as to re-invigorate the lab-leak hypothesis.
The WHO is unabashed by these experiences. Instead, it is doubling down. It has declared monkeypox (Mpox) to be a ‘Public Health Emergency of International Concern’. This is obvious exaggeration. Most cases outside Africa, where the virus is endemic, are among those attending gay sex parties. There is a good argument for offering smallpox vaccines, which cross-protect, to habitues. For everyone else there’s scant risk. It’s not an emergency, even with a lower case ‘e’. Then there is the WHO’s International Health Treaty which, if ratified, would confer supra-national powers in a future pandemic. That is like giving Power of Attorney to a spendthrift megalomaniac uncle.
Many positive articles about Trump’s withdrawal stress these failings. They add that Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, the WHO Director, is an Ethiopian non-medic with a shady past who owes his position to support from China’s CCP. The WHO is said to be China’s poodle. Gordon Brown, writing in the Guardian to regret Trump’s decision doesn’t offer much of a defence, just saying that a global health organisation is needed, whilst conceding that the USA is paying too much.
But is China the incubus? I’m sure the CCP has done much to obfuscate on Covid; I loathe the CCP; but I find that it hard to believe that it is behind the WHO’s excitement apropos trans health and Mpox. So, let’s look at an alternative hypothesis, one that RFK favours, according to his book: that the WHO has been converted into a money machine for Gates.
To understand, look first at where the WHO’s money comes from. For the two years of 2024-25 the biggest contributors to a budget of $6.83 billion are: the USA ($958 million), Gates Foundation ($689 million), GAVI ($500 million), European Commission ($412 million) and Germany ($324 million). The UK is in seventh place at $216 million and China eighth at $203 million. GAVI is the Global Alliance for Vaccination and Immunisation. Its own funding, for 2021-25 inclusive, was $21.6 billion, including $4.98 billion from the USA, $2.64 billion from the UK, $2.18 billion from Germany and $1.81 billion from Gates.
Note that GAVI has pockets as deep as the WHO, that Gates accounts for 8-10% of each one’s income and that GAVI cross-funds the WHO. Together Gates and GAVI provide 18% of the WHO’s budget. GAVI’s role is to buy vaccines and to distribute them. It usually sets its own priorities, which we’ll examine some other day. The present issue comes when the WHO declares a pandemic. GAVI then moves to funding the relevant vaccines. During Covid it co-led, with the WHO and CEPI, the COVAX effort. This delivered shots – principally AstraZeneca’s – to developing countries.
CEPI, in turn, is the Centre for Epidemic Preparedness and Innovation. For 2022-26 it has contributions and pledges worth $2.1 billion, mostly from governments, but including $155 million from Gates. It’s more blue sky than the WHO and GAVI and has a ‘moonshot’ objective of allowing progression from ‘pandemic recognised’ to a vaccine in 100 days. You’ll only achieve that with mRNA technology, arming lipid nanoparticles with a new payload and pretending that prior experience, with different payloads, establishes safety. This is nonsense, of course. Luo’s recent work confirms that mRNA vaccines go all over the body, and that the response of cardiac endothelial cells in particular varied with the mRNA payload and its protein product. More simply, it’s impossible to garner long-term safety and efficacy data in a 100-day development cycle.
Now to the Gates Foundation itself. Besides co-supporting WHO, GAVI and CEPI, Gates invests in pharma start-ups, including BioNTech. Moderna is a previous investee. It also trades these holdings, making a 15-fold profit on sales of BioNTech stock during the pandemic. Microsoft itself had a good pandemic, increasing Gates’s wealth by $7.5 billion.
It is possible to draw a circle of virtue. First, the WHO recognises a threat. Next, aided by CEPI, Gates’s investee companies swiftly develop a vaccine. GAVI delivers this, even to the poorest villager. Humanity is saved. The proceeds flow to the BMGF foundation and fund better health for all – the WHO’s raison d’etre. The sun is shining, the wind soft and who could object, except a churl? Bill asserted that, pre- pandemic, he’d invested $10 billion in global health organisations, bringing public health and economic benefits worth $200 billion. I’ve friends in healthcare who’d concur, though some seek grants and may be biased.
A darker view can also be taken. The WHO can be nudged into over-reaction, as with calling Mpox as an ‘Emergency’. The Pandemic Treaty, if ratified, will hugely strengthen its powers. Any consequent lockdowns would be brief, we’d be told, for CEPI will shortly be along with its 100-day vaccine. Once this is delivered, money will flow from taxpayers, via GAVI, to the manufacturer, likely a Gates investee.
Gates, GAVI and CEPI will benefit from the WHO declaring epidemics and pandemics, and Gates, paying around 10% of the NGOs’ budgets, has leverage. One of RFK’s charges is that, even outside pandemics, Gates has pushed the WHO disproportionately towards vaccines compared with basic public heath interventions such as clean water.
Big Tech, too, will benefit whenever a pandemic is declared, as in the Covid lockdowns. The Microsoft cash cow will grow fatter still. Western legacy media, bribed with Gates’s money for ‘Global Health Security Supplements‘ will look the other way, exclusively berating Tedros and the CCP. In short, a perfect rentier model for extracting money from the taxpayer has been created under the guise of philanthropy, with scrutiny deflected. Microsoft’s attempt to scam me for £25 for Copilot is trivial by comparison, but it illustrates the mindset.
There is one ray of hope, besides Trump’s withdrawal. And that is RFK, who recognises this nexus of NGO grift. His Senate approval interviews are slated for this Wednesday. For this, and many other reasons, it is to be hoped he is approved and appointed.
Dr David Livermore is a retired Professor of Medical Microbiology at the University of East Anglia.
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Anyone worked out how to disable CoPilot? It’s annoying the life out of me.
So far it is still possible to but the software for Apple.
Ask Copilot.
You might be able to prevent the service from starting up.
Start/Run – “services.msc”
Find and disable the copilot service.
Yes, don’t renew your 365 subscription and switch to using OpenOffice.
I got rid of 365 and installed Office professional plus 2010. Simple download – all of the programmes you need and a lifetime licence of about £24 from memory. Totally legal and works just tickerty boo.Just google it
I can get by using the Libre Office suite. It’s free to download but I make a donation every year. Good people run this outfit unlike the psycho Gates.
Rachman better describes the business model.
This link should help
https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/office/how-to-turn-off-copilot-in-microsoft-365-family-and-personal-subscriptions-bc7e530b-152d-4123-8e78-edc06f8b85f1
It didn’t “fail” with “Covid” – it was a roaring success, at least for a while, until people tired of it and realised it was a scam/not that dangerous.
I don’t know the extent to which China is a bad influence on the WHO but the main problem is that it seems like all international organisations turn into gravy trains and hobby horses for woke globalist socialist fascists.
WGSFs. Like it!
The WHO is the last body I want telling me what to do at the first sign of a bit of snot.
The biggest determinants of public health are sanitation, running water, mains electricity, access to healthcare, including medicines on the WHO Essential Drugs List (one useful thing the WHO does do) and, last but not least, overall economic prosperity.
Engineers, plumbers and electricians arguably do more for public health than medics, pharmacologists and corrupt WHO Directors.
Unless the developed world throws away centuries of progress on climate fallacy and folly, these determinants are largely in place. The major threats to personal health are self-inflicted, such as obesity and substance abuse.
President Trump is therefore correct to initiate withdrawal from the WHO. Advancing public health in the less-developed world is about fostering the technical and economic progress that’s already taken the developed world forward. Better done from outside the tent.
As for Co-pilot, a helicopter trip piloted by a software geek and self-appointed public health guru, would be the last last excursion on earth I’d sign up for.
Dr Livermore, please keep on banging the drum for sanity.
Terrific
Thank you.
It’s not as if the Gates’ model is even clever, it is simply banditry on an international, industrial scale. I wonder why politicians keep falling for it?
Conflict of interest and paybacks are normal to them?
This statement is simply a lie. “The WHO did good in the past. It led the vaccination campaigns against smallpox, now eradicated, and polio, nearly eradicated.”
Smallpox has nothing to do with a virus. See Leicester ~1885-1914. No stabs, cleaned up the city, no smallpox.
Smallpox was gone due to hygiene, sanitation by 1930.
Polio is from asbestos, chemicals. Nothing to do with a virus.
Wise up and de-indoctrinate yourself.
The WHO is just a front for Pharma and Gates of Hell.
Yes you can see from the old charts that by the time a vaccine was introduced, Smallpox was levelling off. They introduced the jab and claimed victory. Why the need for the first anti-vaxx movements in the 1800s if they were some sort of wonder treatment.
Exactly. Just read either book ‘Dissolving Illusions’ or ‘Virus Mania’ to recognize that vaccines only ever poisoned people – and still do.
oh for the Epstein files to be fully released
Yes, we urgently need this alongside the files on the CIA/FBI assassinations.
The Epstein client list has been available on X for ages. Here it is again, please spread widely:
That photo: Gates finally getting arrested. One day, please God.
Great article. As Dr Livermore suggests, it is difficult to tell if Gates is a true philanthropist or a power-hungry arch manipulator of global proportions. Does he donate to media outlets round the world to disseminate useful medical information or does he bribe the press outlets around the world to flog his products under an ‘Uncle Bill’ persona. I subscribe to the latter: he seems to have infiltrated all the right organisations to maximise his influence and finances. Whether his motives are altruistic or avaricious though, no individual person or company should be allowed to wield such power and influence within a global organisation. Is conflict of interest now an old-fashioned concept?
As for computers, they are much harder to use than ten years ago. All the add ons and pop ups at least ensure that I cut down time I spend on them, I suppose. And I find the enforced add ons creepy as well as largely unnecessary. Nudging their way into people’s personal use of their computers – creeping into people’s personal spaces. Possibly a reflection of the repressed mindsets of the Sillycon Valley set. They need their as**s kicking. They’d probably enjoy that.
The problem is our political class who lurve to give away sovereignty to unelected technocrats.
Don’t overlook the German connection to the creation of covid with their funded lab in Wuhan, the huge amount of money they pay the WHO, their Chinese connections and their historic love of experimenting on people.
I thank Dr Livermore for the information about the Microsoft Office AI scam.
It took me a while to find out how to avoid the £25 AI fine.
Go to account, go to cancel….then you have the option to choose the classic Microsoft Office at the old rate.
A good book to read is Tim Schwab’ book “The Problem with Bill Gates”. It exposes the insidious network and control that Gates has built. He has silenced opposition with his incredible wealth by buying it. There was enormous efforts by newspaper to expose Gates and his philanthropy so Gates started funding them. Then the articles stopped. He can walk into any country and have access to the Prime Minister. He started and controls Gavi to get governments to fund vaccines that are made and sold by him and big pharma. What a cash cow. He is saving the world though. Never mind he is making huge amounts of cash, killing huge numbers of innocent people with his experiments and essentially knows nothing about the science of vaccines other than what he is told. This is all exposed clearly in the book.
This is surely a conflict of interest issue.
Gates funds a large part of WHO. This recommends vaccines.
WHO commissions other bodies that he also funds, such as GAVI,
Gavi raises interest in, and promotes the distribution of, vaccines.
The vaccines are made by companies in which Gates is invested, making him large profits.
These profits help fund his support of WHO.
There’s certainly one winner.
I’m surprised more people have not twigged about Windows. I ditched it completely when my Windows XP was turned off remotely by Microsoft rendering my desktop unusable until I discovered free to use Linux (Zorin version, they just ask for donations on the basic versions , and Open Office/Libre office. Again donations welcome. Now installed on my Laptop. For video calls I use my mobile which again is Linux, the Android version, but am sure there are apps to video conference on the Linux desktop/laptop versions.
Forgot to add -Three cheers for Linus Torvalds, a man who has done more for computers and their users than Gates ever has, and for nothing.