Commentary
The director-general of the World Health Organization (WHO) reassures us that WHO’s “pandemic accord” (or “treaty”) won’t reduce the sovereignty of WHO’s member states. WHO trusts that these words will serve as a distraction from reality. Those driving the perpetual health emergency agenda are planning to give the WHO more power and states less. This will happen whenever WHO designates a “Public Health Emergency of International Concern,” or decides that we may be at risk of one.
WHO’s proposed treaty, taken together with its “synergistic” amendments to the International Health Regulations (IHR), aims to undo centuries of democratic reform that based sovereignty with individuals, and by extension their state. The discomfort of facing this truth and the complexities it raises is providing the cover needed to push these changes through. This is how democracy and freedom wither and die.
Why It’s Hard to Acknowledge Reality
Our society in the West is built on trust and a feeling of superiority—we built the institutions that run the world, and they, and we, are good. We consider ourselves humanitarians, the public health advocates, the unifiers, and the anti-fascist freedom lovers. We consider our system better than the alternatives—we are “progressive.”It’s quite a step for comfortable, middle-income left-leaning professionals to believe that the institutions and philanthropic organizations we have admired all our lives might now be pillaging us. Our society relies on having “trusted sources,” the WHO being one of them. Among others are our major media organizations.
If our trusted sources told us we were being misled and pillaged, we would accept this. But they are telling us these claims are false and that all is well. The WHO’s director-general himself assures us of this. Anyone who thinks rich corporate and private sponsors of the WHO and other health institutions are self-interested, that they might mislead and exploit others for their own benefit, is a conspiracy theorist.
We are all capable of believing that the rich and powerful of past ages would exploit the masses, but somehow this is hard to believe in the present. For proof of their benevolence, we rely on the word of their own publicity departments and the media they support. Somehow, malfeasance on a grand scale is always a figment of history, and now we are smarter and enlightened.
Over recent decades, we have watched individuals accumulate wealth equivalent to that of medium-sized countries. They meet our elected leaders behind closed doors at Davos. We then applaud the largesse they bestow on the less fortunate, and we pretend all this is fine. We watch as corporations expand across national borders, seemingly above the laws that apply to ordinary citizens.
We allowed their “public–private partnerships” to turn international institutions into purveyors of their commodities. We ignored this descent because their publicity departments told us to, and we become apologists for obvious authoritarians because we want to believe they are somehow doing a “greater good.”
While a schoolchild might see through this façade to the conflicted greed beyond, it’s much harder for those with years of political baggage, a peer network, a reputation, and a career to admit they have been duped. The behavioral psychologists our governments and institutions now employ understand this. Their job is to keep us believing the trusted sources they sponsor. Our challenge is to put reality above right-think.
The Remaking of the WHO
When the WHO was set up in 1946 to help coordinate responses to major health issues, the world was emerging from the most recent great bout of fascism and colonialism. Both these societal models were sold on the basis of centralizing power for a greater good. Those who considered themselves superior would run the world for those less worthy. The WHO once claimed to follow a different line.Since the early 2000s, the WHO’s activities have been increasingly dictated by “specified funding.” Its funders, increasingly including private and corporate interest, tell it how to use the money they give.
Private direction is fine for private organizations promoting their investors’ wares, but it’s obviously a nonstarter for an organization seeking to mandate medicines, close borders, and confine people. Anyone with a basic understanding of history and human nature will recognize this. But these powers are exactly what the amendments to the International Health Regulations and the new treaty intend.
Rather than consider alternate approaches, the WHO is seeking censorship of opinions not fitting its narrative, publicly denigrating and demeaning those who question its policies. These aren’t the actions of an organization “we the people” are truly represented by, nor of one confident in its ability to justify its actions. They are the trappings we have always associated with intellectual weakness and fascism.
WHO’s Effect on Population Health
In its 2019 pandemic influenza recommendations, the WHO stated that “not in any circumstances” should contact tracing, border closures, entry or exit screening, or quarantine of exposed individuals be undertaken in an established pandemic. They wrote this because such measures would cause more harm than good and would disproportionately harm poorer people. In 2020, in conjunction with private and national sponsors, it supported the largest wealth shift in history from low to high income by promoting these same measures.In abandoning its principles, the WHO abandoned millions of girls to nightly rape through child marriage, increased teenage pregnancies and child mortality, reduced childhood education, and grew poverty and malnutrition. Despite that most of these people were too young to be troubled by COVID-19 and already had immunity, they promoted billions of dollars of mass vaccination while focus on traditional priorities, such as malaria, tuberculosis, and HIV/AIDS, deteriorated.
Western media have met this with silence or empty rhetoric. Saving lives doesn’t turn a profit, but selling commodities does. WHO’s sponsors are doing what they need for their investors, and the WHO is doing what it needs to keep their money flowing.
The New Powers of the WHO
The IHR amendments will reduce the sovereignty of any WHO member state that fails to actively reject them, giving a single person (the director general) direct influence over health policy and the freedom of its citizens. This is indisputable; it’s clearly stated in the document. Countries will “undertake” to follow recommendations, no longer simply suggestions or advice.While the WHO doesn’t have a police force, the World Bank and IMF are on board and control much of your money supply. The U.S. Congress passed a bill last year recognizing that the U.S. government should address countries that don’t comply with the IHR. We aren’t witnessing toothless threats; most countries, and their people, will have little choice.
The real power of the WHO’s proposals is in their application for any health-related matter they proclaim to be a threat. The proposed amendments state this explicitly, while the “treaty” expands the scope to “One Health,” a hijacked public health concept that can mean anything perceived to be affecting human physical, mental, or social well-being. Inclement weather, crop failures, or the promulgation of ideas that cause people stress—everyday things that humans has always coped with—now become reasons to confine people and impose solutions dictated by others.
In essence, those sponsoring the WHO are manufacturing crises of their own desiring and are set to get wealthier from others’ misery, as they did during COVID-19. This under the guise of “keeping us safe.” As the WHO implausibly insists, “no one is safe until all are safe,” so removal of human rights must be broad and prolonged. Behavioral psychology is there to ensure that we comply.
Facing the Future
We are building a future in which compliance with authoritarian dictates will cause the reoccurrence of stolen freedoms and censorship will suppress dissent. People who wish to see evidence, who remember history or insist on informed consent, will be designated, in WHO parlance, far-right mass killers. We have already entered this world. Public figures who claim otherwise are presumably not paying attention or have other motivations.We can meekly accept this new disease-obsessed world, and some may even embrace the salaries and careers it bestows. Or we can join those fighting for the simple right of individuals to determine their own future, free from the false public goods of colonialism and fascism. At the very least, we can acknowledge the reality around us.
Views expressed in this article are opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.
