In the wake of the myriad failures during the covid pandemic response, World Health Organization officials did little self reflection.
Instead, they decided that they needed even more power over the global population. Subsequently, the idea of a Global Pandemic Treaty was born.
COVID-19 illustrated the need for enhanced preparedness and closer cooperation at global level. Improved collaboration between research centers around the globe and better coordination of international funding could improve monitoring of risks and knowledge-sharing about new infectious diseases. Global coordination of stockpiling could ensure countries have access to essential supplies. A pandemic agreement could also lead to better response mechanisms and tackle inequities in access to vaccines, medicines and diagnostics.On 1 December 2021, the members of the World Health Organization (WHO) reached consensus to start the process to draft and negotiate a convention, agreement or other international instrument under the Constitution of the World Health Organization to strengthen pandemic prevention, preparedness and response.
The WHO will convene next week, and one of the issues of its focus will be that treaty. It will then deliver a progress report to the 76th World Health Assembly in 2023, with the aim of adopting the instrument by 2024.
Fox News Channel host Tucker Carlson took a look at the treaty and began sounding the alarm.
The World Health Organization gets to define what a pandemic is, when a pandemic is in progress and how long a pandemic lasts. Then you read the fine print and you realize the W.H.O will have total authority over emergency operations in the United States if there’s ever a “public health emergency.” Huh?What qualifies exactly as a public health emergency? Well, they don’t define that, but they get to. They get to decide what a public health emergency is, and then they have total authority. You can see where this is going. Now, the Biden administration has made certain that unelected bureaucrats, the W.H.O., have total authority to declare and define public health emergencies. They did it explicitly.The White House eliminated a provision that would have required the World Health Organization to “consult with an attempt to obtain verification from the state party in whose territory the event is allegedly occurring in.”
Of the many issues Carlson has with the proposed treaty, he slammed the “equity” approach to the distribution of medical relief hard.
According to the treaty, those vaccines and essential medicines—because it gets better on every page—will be distributed not on the basis of need, but on the basis of equity. Equity is quoted, says, “critically important for global health, both as a principle and as an outcome.” That’s what the treaty declares.Therefore, the World Health Organization will ensure “equitable and effective access to vaccines, therapeutics, diagnostics and essential supplies and for clinical trials” and that means, again quoting, “health care workers and the most vulnerable will have priority access.” Not the sickest, not the people who need the medicine most, but the most vulnerable in a larger sense. In other words, favored groups get medicine first.There is no graver violation of medical ethics than this. [emphasis mine]
If you are skeptical of Carlson’s claim and/or want confirmation, I give you this piece in the British Medical Journal: Pandemic treaty: a chance to level up on equity
One of the key principles which has underscored the pandemic instrument discussions—at the World Health Assembly Special Session, the 150th World Health Organisation Executive Board Meeting, and the INB’s public hearings—has been that of equity. Yet, in practice equity has not been related to access to and distribution of medical countermeasures, such as vaccines, in future pandemics.The failures of the patent based system and advance market commitments has undermined the success of global public goods approach such as COVAX. Many states, particularly those low and middle income countries that have suffered from being unable to purchase covid-19 vaccines, are demanding that equitable access and distribution is included into the pandemic instrument.A more comprehensive equity must also be central to pandemic governance in the future, especially gender, racial, geographical, and socio-economic equity. These intersectional areas of policymaking have been widely ignored in previous infectious disease protocols, to the detriment of marginalised communities that are most affected by downstream effects of inequitable and neutral policies, based on assumptions that all people experience health emergencies in the same way.
Senator Steve Daines (R-MT) and Senator Tom Cotton (R-AR) sent a letter to Biden stating that the U.S. must leave the “corrupt and inept” organization.
The senators take issue with the Biden administration’s plan to support amendments to the International Health Regulations (IHR) from Jan. 18, which they say would increase the WHO’s power at the expense of the U.S. and its allies.”The WHO has demonstrated an abysmal lack of competence throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, which has destroyed the organization’s credibility and undermined the public’s confidence in it,” write the senators.They cite the organization’s false claim in January 2020 that the COVID-19 virus was not spread by human-to-human transmission and the WHO director general’s praise of China’s handling of the pandemic.
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