Powering up the WHO: be alert and alarmed
Why proposed changes to the International Health Regulations are a VERY BAD idea
By Libby Klein | Reclaim Ethical Medicine | December 18, 2022
One might think that of course we need an international body that can help everyone around the world to work together in times of crisis to combat pandemics and other scary global things.
Well that sounds sensible.
One might think that’s what we have the World Health Organisation (WHO) for.
Well that may have been the original idea, but it turns out there’s a few issues with the WHO. How effective is it and what role should it have?
Seems the world has skipped past those questions and gone straight to: let’s give the WHO all the power it needs so that it can do a better job of controlling pandemics.
And let’s not just tweak one or two things here and there. Let’s have a whole new treaty. And let’s call it something really long, like Convention, Agreement or Other International Instrument on Pandemic Prevention, Preparedness and Response and give it a confusing acronym, like CA+.
AND let’s also simultaneously amend the existing International Health Regulations. In ways that overlap. Through forums which are supposedly transparent but which are largely conducted in secret.
There’s a lot going on here. But don’t be fooled by the flowery language or put off by the density and complexity of the documents. Be assured there are some big issues which warrant your attention.
I’ve listed some of the issues in the most recent proposals to amend the International Health Regulations below. Please add your comments and share your insights!
Note: they don’t call a spade a spade and they don’t call a pandemic a pandemic. They call it a “Public Health Emergency of International Concern”. There’s 2 reasons for that:
- they like to use long confusing names and make up impressive acronyms (“PHEIC”)
- they want to have power to do all sorts of things whether or not there’s actually a pandemic and even where they think there might be something happening which one day may result in a pandemic.
The scope of WHO’s powers is to be broadened significantly, from “public health risk” to “all risks with a potential to impact public health” (Article 2)
- Proposed new article 13A recognises the WHO as the authority of public health response during a Public Health Emergency of International Concern. (Note: none of the published submissions make this suggestion. Where did it come from?)
- Article 13A includes an undertaking by all Member States, that they will follow WHO’s “recommendations”. Earlier in the document, “recommendations” are defined to be legally binding.
- Countries are also required to ensure they have regulatory agency with legal authority to implement WHO’s dictates. (Article 4 para 1)
- Countries can contest the legally binding recommendations but the Emergency Committee’s review decision will be final, following which the country must report to the WHO that it has complied. (Article 43 para 6).
- The World Health Assembly can make decisions “on the strengthening of the implementation of these Regulations and improvement of compliance” – obscure language – does this mean the World Health Assembly can decide on sanctions?
- Developed countries must provide funding (Article 44 para 2(f); Annex 1 new para “1 bis”)
- The World Health Assembly will oversee expenditure of funds that Member States are required to provide (Article 44A para 2).
- WHO decides on allocation of health products (Article 13A).
- WHO requires Member States to scale up production (Article 13A para 4), and to supply health products to the WHO or other Member States as directed by the WHO (Article 13 para 5).
- The Director General – a single person – can make temporary, binding “recommendations” on the basis that an event has the potential to become a Public Health Emergency of International Concern, and those recommendations can continue in force beyond the end of a Public Health Emergency of International Concern (Article 15).
- The concept of public health measures which are aimed at achieving “the appropriate level of health protection” is to be removed. The new objective is to attain the “highest achievable level of health protection” without any consideration of proportionality.
- WHO can impose restrictions on international travel – and may not even disclose the information it has relied on in doing so – Article 11.
- Any discussions that countries have amongst themselves must be reported to the WHO (Article 44 para 3).
- Countries must comply with requests by WHO or other countries (Annex 10).
- Governments will be required to enforce compliance with WHO health measures by all actors including NGOs (Article 42).
- Countries must cooperate in censorship of information which the WHO deems to be “false and unreliable (Article 44 para 1(h)).
- WHO will strengthen capacities to counter misinformation and disinformation (Annex 1 para 7).
- The Director General – a single person – unilaterally determines whether there is a (potential or actual) Public Health Emergency of International Concern in a particular location. (Article 12 para 1).
- In deciding whether to declare a Public Health Emergency of International Concern, the Director General does not have to consult with the country concerned or its own Emergency Committee (Article 12 para 2). (And at any rate the Director General chooses the members of the Emergency Committee – Article 48 para 2.)
- The ability of the country to object to the WHO’s declaration of a Public Health Emergency of International Concern has been removed (Article 12 para 3).
- There is to be “secure global digital exchange of health information” (Article 44 para 2(d))
- Centralised data sharing is to be controlled by the WHO (Article 11)
- Governments can agree to share and store your personal health data (Article 45 para 4).
- Regulatory dossiers submitted by manufacturers concerning safety and efficacy, and manufacturing and quality control measures, have to be shared, but countries can only use that information for accelerating the manufacture and supply of those products and technologies. There is no reference to using the data to make their own assessment of safety and efficacy, betraying a blind spot on the part of the drafters: they are so focussed on facilitating the imposition of pharmaceutical products on everybody that they don’t even think to make provisions regarding sharing of information for the purpose of assessing or monitoring safety and efficacy.
- There is a requirement to adopt “legal, administrative and technical measures to diversify and increase production of health products” (Annex 1 para 7) (but not to promote development of early treatment protocols for example).
- Rules of engagement: Malaysia (article 12 para 7) and Africa (article 13A para 7) have proposed new wording which ostensibly puts some guard rails around how the WHO engages with non-State actors, by requiring the WHO to comply with paragraph 73 of the Framework for Engagement of Non-State Actors (FENSA). However, that paragraph in FENSA does not impose any constraints on the WHO. On the contrary, it grants the Director-General complete flexibility: “… the Director-General may exercise flexibility as might be needed in the application of procedures of this framework in those responses, when he/she deems necessary, in accordance with WHO’s responsibilities as health cluster lead.” This complete flexibility is given to a single individual, the Director-General of the WHO.
- In terms of disclosure, the new article 13A does require the WHO to report all its engagements with other stakeholders to the World Health Assembly, and to “provide documents and information relating to such engagements upon request of State Parties.” However, this is far from requiring full disclosure. The WHO could supply summary documents and information, rather than making full disclosure. The WHO has not disclosed who has proposed this new article 13A.
Steve Kirsch interview with UK cardiologist Aseem Malhotra
stkirsch – December 21, 2022
My 80-minute interview with famous UK cardiologist Aseem Malhotra. He went from pro-vax to anti-vax. He noted that “No cardiologist that you know of is getting any more COVID jabs. That’s information that’s been shared with me since my publication.” Guess what? The mainstream UK press is NOT covering that.
In one year, the UK has gone from nearly all the UK cardiologists getting jabbed to all of them refusing to get any more. That’s a pretty dramatic shift in opinion in 1 year. The narrative cannot be maintained much longer. How many years will it be before the mainstream media reports this?
We covered a lot of ground in the 80 minute interview which I recorded using Squadcast.fm for crystal clarity of the video, then I imported into Davinci Resolve to assemble the two videos and normalize the sound levels.
Topics covered (but not in this order):
- WHO says that patients should be fully informed of side effects but for the vaccine the rule doesn’t apply
- Is there a scientific reason that vaccines should have liability protection? What happened when India refused to offer it? [Kudos to India for being smarter than the rest of the world health authorities ]
- When does the nonsense stop in the UK?
- Will anyone debate you? Why do they all refuse?
- Is the vaccine helpful for anyone?
- C, D, Zinc + nasal rinses: far better than vaccines for COVID?
- 8% needed to seek medical attention after the vax (per v-safe, rasmussen, and my surveys). Is that “safe”? Or ridiculously unsafe? What should it be?
- How many red-pilled cardiologists are there in the UK? It went from 5% against to 100% against in just one year!
- What are the death and disability rates from the vax?
- Is there enough evidence now to stop the vaccines? So why aren’t they?
- Does the vax do anything good? or is it all net bad?
- Did the press cover your paper? WTF?!!? Why not? They covered all your other papers!
- You got the vax. Have you screened yourself for subclinical myocarditis?
- How confident are you that your dad died suddenly due to the vaccine?
- Nobody wanted to see the Israeli safety data. Ever heard of that before?
- What do you think of the embalmer clots?
- How are they trying to discredit you? Have people accused you of being a grifter? motivations?
- Has anyone published a rebuttal to your paper? With the entire world against you (at least publicly), it seems odd nobody is challenging your papers on COVID.
Aseem’s patreon account has various levels if you would like to support his work.
U.N. Predicts Disaster if Global Warming Not Checked (1989 article)
Kind of like the “Winter of Illness and Death”
By Igor Chudov | December 26, 2022
Let’s appreciate how lucky we all are:
- We are having a great holiday season.
- We did not die last year in the “Winter of Illness and Death for the Unvaccinated.”
- We did not die of overheating, starvation, dust bowl, and massive ocean flooding that was supposed to kill or displace us by 2019.
Let’s talk about the last point: a 1989 AP article explains that the UN predicted a global climate disaster that was supposed to happen within 30 years, so by 2019.
The article is terrifying to read. Actual quotes:
- Entire nations could be wiped off the face of the Earth by rising sea levels if the global warming trend is not reversed by the year 2000.
- Coastal flooding and crop failures would create an exodus of ″eco- refugees.”
- Ocean levels will rise by up to three feet, enough to cover the Maldives and other flat island nations.
- The most conservative scientific estimate is that the Earth’s temperature will rise 1 to 7 degrees in the next 30 years, said Brown.
You may be relieved to find out that the actual temperature change between 1989 and 2021, if you believe the official temperature numbers, is 0.85-0.27 degrees, or 0.58 degrees.
The 1989 UNEP report deals with degrees in CELSIUS, as does the chart above.
What about the global sea level that was supposed to inundate entire countries and turn people into eco-refugees? The NOAA ocean level chart helps us see what happened since 1989:
Instead of 3 feet, the sea level rose by 3 inches!
Some of my critically-thinking readers may ask: what if the dire prediction failed to materialize because of a success in curbing CO2 emissions? The helpful official carbon dioxide chart shows a continued rise of CO2 — so there was no real curbing of emissions.
This RECENT photo illustrates that climate change is real and threatening. Please find the difference between these two pictures!
In the 2022 report, like the UN 30 years ago, the WEF is also warning us that in 30 years, we will have to deal with 200 million climate refugees:
Climate change is causing heart attacks in 2022!
I totally believe in all this! How can the WEF be wrong?
Twitter Files describe Covid censorship campaign
RT | December 26, 2022
The latest batch of Twitter documents released by CEO Elon Musk show how the platform censored posts about Covid-19 that didn’t align with the White House’s message. Qualified doctors and epidemiologists were suppressed and banned at the direct request of the Biden administration, the documents suggest.
Both the Trump and Biden administrations pushed Twitter to moderate coronavirus-related content, journalist David Zweig reported on Monday, citing the company’s internal communications. While Trump’s team wanted to tamp down rumors of grocery-store shortages to combat panic-buying, Biden switched focus to “misinformation” about vaccines once his team took over in January 2021.
According to files seen by Zweig, Biden’s staff directly pressured Twitter to ban “high-profile anti-vaxxer accounts,” including that of former New York Times reporter Alex Berenson, who has persistently claimed that the risks of vaccination outweigh the benefits. Twitter complied and suspended Berenson in July 2021, but Twitter employees said afterwards that “the Biden team” was still “not satisfied” with the platform’s censorship efforts, and angrily demanded that it “de-platform several accounts.”
Twitter placed a warning label on the account of a Harvard epidemiologist who argued that “those with prior natural infection” do not need to be vaccinated, and flagged as “misleading” tweets that cited the Biden administration’s own data on Covid death rates. It used a combination of AI “bots” and contracted moderators in foreign countries to make these decisions.
A physician was flagged for sharing the results of a peer-reviewed study linking vaccination with cardiac arrests in young people, while another doctor was permanently suspended for referring to a published study suggesting that vaccination temporarily impairs male patients’ sperm count.
“Dissident yet legitimate content was labeled as misinformation, and the accounts of doctors and others were suspended both for tweeting opinions and demonstrably true information,” Zweig tweeted.
When former President Donald Trump urged his followers not to “be afraid of Covid” following his own recovery from the illness, Twitter’s senior moderators debated taking action against the tweet, before concluding that Trump’s “optimistic” assessment did not count as misinformation.
Since purchasing Twitter for $44 billion in October, Musk has released batches of documents shedding light on the platform’s previously opaque censorship policies. Published by several independent journalists, these document dumps have shown how Twitter suppressed information damaging to Joe Biden’s election campaign, colluded with the FBI to remove content the agency wanted hidden, assisted the US military’s online influence campaigns, and censored “anti-Ukraine narratives” on behalf of multiple US intelligence agencies.
Daily Mail Promotes ‘Sixth Mass Extinction’ Scare that Experts Call “Junk Science”
BY CHRIS MORRISON | THE DAILY SCEPTIC | DECEMBER 24, 2022
The Daily Mail recently published a story claiming the world could face a mass extinction of plants and animals within less than 80 years, with more than a quarter of species dying by 2100. It was an eye-catching headline, timed of course to appear at the same time as the UN’s biodiversity conference. But curiously missing from the article, based on a recent science paper, was a note that most of the data underpinning the eco-scare were created by the authors of the report, while assumptions were made that global temperatures would rise by up to 5°C. Given that global temperatures have risen only 1.1°C over the last two centuries, and over the last two decades probably no more than 0.1°C, this looks a tad on the high side.
The report authors give considerable weight to the view that food chains are fragile in nature, and one extinction leads to another. This may be true in some cases, although most animals in the wild are resilient in adapting their diets to changing conditions. But building a media ‘mass death’ headline surely needs a few actual facts. The authors admit: “Apart from the obvious modelling and computational challenges to incorporate interactions among species, the main reason why there are few studies accounting for interactions is that obtaining sufficient data in most communities is intractable.” They add that an important caveat is that “while our virtual species are functionally realistic, they do not have taxonomic or phylogenetic meaning.” According to the Mail, the scientists aimed to build an “ecologically plausible Earth”.
Modelled results were obtained via a supercomputer assuming temperatures suddenly leap by between 4-5°C in just 80 years. The so-called ‘pathways’ feeding in these huge temperature rises are themselves the product of computers. But reality has started to bite in climate model circles with the realisation that their mock-ups are running far too hot. Four decades of wrong forecasts and the knowledge that global warming went off the boil two decades ago has led to a slight lowering of the various projections. But claiming that a quarter of species could disappear within 80 years as temperatures rise five times more than they have done for the last 200 is just fanciful speculation.
The Mail reported that the scientists’ tool can map extinctions everywhere on earth. It is said to confirm “beyond doubt” that the world is in the throes of its sixth mass extinction.
The sixth mass extinction scare is becoming very popular in climate Armageddon circles. Heavily promoted by the World Wildlife Fund, it has a lot going for it on the propaganda front, although some may quibble that it is notably short on actual proof. The International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) lists 823 animals and plant species (mostly animals) that have gone extinct since 1500. If we are in the midst of the sixth mass extinction, as the Mail reports, we might have expected to be able to name more than 823 extinct species in 522 years.
Five years ago, the eminent Smithsonian paleontologist Doug Erwin dismissed sixth mass extinction talk as “junk science“. He went on to state that “many of those making facile comparisons between the current situation and past mass extinctions don’t have a clue about the difference in the nature of the data, much less how truly awful the mass extinctions recorded in the marine fossil record actually were”.
The Australian science blogger Jo Nova had an interesting take on the latest mass extinction science paper. “So a supercomputer adds up 15,000 webs of low level data on sloths, bark and butterflies, with error bars larger than trends, in systems we don’t understand, and a million lines of code, and extrapolates data up the kazoo – what could possibly go wrong?”
She goes on to quote Dr. Patrick Moore, co-founder of Greenpeace, who has noted that most of the species going extinct, “never existed in the first place”. Moore is another who is underwhelmed by extinction work produced by computers. He is unimpressed by estimates from the biologist Edward Wilson that 50,000 species go extinct every year. This estimate is based on computer models of the number of potential but as yet undiscovered species in the world.
“There’s no scientific basis for saying that 50,000 species are going extinct. The only place you can find them is in Edward O. Wilson’s computer at Harvard University. They’re actually electrons on a hard drive. I want a list of Latin names of actual species,” he wrote.
Finally, let us remember the Bramble Cay melomys, the first animal said to have become extinct due to human-caused climate change. Until recently, this little brown rat lived on a small sandy island off the coast of Australia. How it got there nobody knows, but rats are very resourceful and it probably hopped on a passing branch, said goodbye to a billion of its close relatives, and set sail. It liked its new home since there were plenty of blue turtle and birds eggs to eat. But, alas, its home was only three metres above sea level and the area prone to cyclones (your fault), so one day it got washed away. The Guardian was particularly taken with its sad end since it called for a “moment of silence”, and said it would “continue to fight for the things you believe in” – although presumably not eating blue turtle eggs.
“Anti-Science” a Weaponized Term Used by Those Who Refuse to Face Vaccine Safety Data
By Peter A. McCullough | Courageous Discourse | December 24, 2022
Last night I was invited on national TV and appeared with former US Representative Jason Chaffetz on FOX News Ingraham Angle and was asked to react to the term “anti-science” used by Anthony Fauci. During my preparation I learned the term “anti-science” had been used to describe the conflict between old paradigms during the scientific revolution and the introduction of the scientific method. In recent years the term has been used within modern clinical science in a different and dark way. Dr. Peter Hotez, vaccine promoter at the Baylor College of Medicine in Houston, has developed a lecture tour and set of writings for several years before the COVID-19 crisis using the term “anti-science” as a way of denigrating those who are evaluating and discussing safety data on vaccines.
Hotez is now joined by Tedros at the WHO and Fauci (retired NIH) in promulgating the term anti-science as a pejorative and insulting way of positioning clinical scientists who are studying the epidemiology, pathophysiology, and clinical consequences of COVID-19 vaccine injuries, disabilities, and deaths. Yes, the study of what COVID-19 vaccines do to the human body is “science” and it is insulting to hear the term “anti-science” thrown out as a blocking tool in order to discount any side effects of vaccination.
Tedros went so far as to say those studying vaccine injuries and who wisely chose to defer on vaccination themselves are “killing machines.” This unhinged hyperbole is symptomatic of a psychotic break in those who who have been the vanguard of the imploding worldwide narrative supporting mass vaccination.
I summarized these comments and pivoted on television to the opportunities that Drs Fauci, Walensky, Jha, Murthy, and several others had on Jan 24 and Dec 7, 2022, to attend US Senate Hearings and listen to COVID-19 experts and have an interchange on the “science” of what we have learned. Instead none of them showed up and now are painting themselves with the term “anti-science”. This regression can only lead to greater loss of credibility and dissolution of the crumbling false narrative “safe and effective.”
Canadian Government Tells Kids They’ll Be On Santa’s ‘Naughty List’ Without COVID Vaccine, Masks
By Tyler Durden | Zero Hedge | December 23, 2022
It’s the end of 2022 and the world is still witnessing new heights of Covid absurdity and fear-mongering authoritarianism coming from government figures.
Canada’s Chief Public Health Officer Theresa Tam has issued a new public health announcement for the Christmas holidays, which comes in the form of a 2-minute interview with “Mrs. Clause” from the “North Pole”. In it, children are warned that they could be on Santa’s “naughty list” if they don’t get the Covid-19 vaccine and mask up. Adults too are told that they won’t make the “nice list” if they don’t have their boosters.
Dr. Tam begins the video with the “good news” that the vast majority of Canadians have made the nice list this year after having been vaccinated.
And “Mrs. Claus” responds: “It just warms my heart to see everyone in Canada, especially kids, working so hard to keep the holidays safe…” The suggestion is that the minority of citizens who remain unvaccinated or without their boosters are “naughty”.
Mrs. Claus then informs the children that she and Santa are “both up do date with our vaccinations, including Covid boosters and flu shots.” This is the holiday image Canada wants to convey to impressionable young children – that coronavirus now threatens the mythical North Pole, apparently.
From there the Christmas message goes into the kind of guilt-tripping rhetoric we’ve all come to expect from the Canadian government, and its top health official who is the equivalent of Dr. Fauci.
“I always tell Santa to make a list and check it twice,” Mrs. Claus says, and goes through the “list” by telling children to “stay up to date on your vaccinations” as well as “wear a mask… and make sure it’s nice and snug.”
Dr. Tam follows by telling families that if they gather for the holidays, “open a door, or a window” to let fresh air in.
All of this might actually be a step up for Canada when compared to the first couple years of the pandemic, given that across major cities there were strict curfews severely hindering freedom of movement, and not even relatives could visit family members after dark on fear of being ticketed by police.
Merry Christmas
eugyppius: a plague chronicle | December 24, 2022
In 2020 it was the lockdowners who destroyed Christmas, and in 2021 it was the vaccinators. All of it was for nothing. Sweden, which never locked down, has lower cumulative excess mortality than Germany, which locked down longer and harder than almost any other country in Europe. Nor did anyone even try to pretend that excluding the unvaccinated from public life would reduce the incidence of infection or death. The vaccinators claim that their elixirs reduce the rate of severe outcome from SARS-2 infection, but mass vaccination has coincided with increases in all-cause mortality and higher rates of transmission everywhere that it has been tried.
In the end, the lockdowners and the vaccinators lost. Alas, it wasn’t our alleged rights or democratic principles that saved us, but only Omicron, which crashed the pandemicists’ mythology faster than the Federal Republic of Germany could get their coercive proposals before the Bundestag. Today, the German Corona regime is all but dead, and even China has sworn off Zero Covid.
While I like to think that we may have played a small part in defeating the hysterical clowns and their virus circus, their greatest opponent was always reality. They stirred up enough panic and utopian hope to impede ordinary social life for the better part of two years, but they were too wrong about too many things to survive as any kind of durable political movement.
While they’ve done incalculable damage and changed many aspects of our lives and our societies forever, it feels really, really great to have Christmas back again.
Merry Christmas to all of my readers.
The pharma inquisitors are coming
start the busses and warm up your throwing arms
by el gato malo – bad cattitude – december 23, 2022
long time readers will know of my past predictions on the pfizer phuture of governments turning upon the big pharma co’s that pushed the covid vaccines and declaring fraud in order to use “we wuz lied to!” as the low energy climbdown out of the eye of public rage that will land upon them should anyone ever figure out what a full blown disaster this has been.
the movement appears to be starting in earnest. first a drop, then a trickle, until one day it’s a dam burst and a torrent.
well, here comes the rain:
DeSantis’ Grand Jury Impaneled to Investigate mRNA Vaccine Manufacturers
as astonishing as it may sound after the last 3 years, it is still, in fact, illegal to sell and market products (especially drugs) based on false claims. even in america, phraud is still a phelony. (it also pierces the EUA liability waiver)
The statewide grand jury will be allowed to investigate groups involved in the design, development, clinical testing, marketing, and distribution of vaccines said to prevent COVID-19 infection, symptoms, and transmission. It will be impaneled for one year.
DeSantis’ petition argued that there was widespread belief that the COVID-19 vaccine prevented the disease from spreading, which led to vaccine mandates on citizens, health care workers, and military members.
“It is impossible to imagine that so many influential individuals came to this view on their own. Rather, it is likely that individuals and companies with an incentive to do so created these perceptions for financial gain,” the petition said.
The petition specifically points out Moderna and Pfizer’s claims about preventing the COVID-19 disease with “94.1% efficacy” and “91.3% vaccine efficacy.”
now, many, especially in the hyper-partisan tribalism of the US may try to write this off as a political stunt, and while i suspect it may also be quite politically effective, i doubt that is the primary purpose. there are just too many facts here that don’t add up and this is the path to start getting to the bottom of it.
it’s really not yet clear to me how effective this can or will be. pfizer is a canny company and managed much of their apparent malfeasance in locales like argentina that are notoriously difficult jurisdictions from which to compel the production of documents and witnesses.
on the other hand, the onus lies up the claimant to prove the claims they made are valid and there are entire armories of smoky looking guns lying around in the dodgy looking data.
it will be an interesting wrestling match.
but it is FAR from the only potential bout on the card.
the european commission has been trying to get pfizer CEO albert bourla in to have a few words about the deeply unusual manner in which the EU contracts were signed and EC president ursula von der lyin’ (that was probably a typo or something) sure seems to have lost all her records on the matter.
more dogs are eating more homework as israeli interest in this matters is piqued as well.
and then come the germans who also seem to have some pointy questions of their own.
pfizer and moderna may not be quite running out of friends yet, but they certainly seem to have no shortage of new inquisitors who are starting to take far more than passing interests in the l’affaires covidienne.
this is how the tail gets caught in the ringer and the rest of the beast inexorably follows.
once the questions start in earnest and from all sides, the game can really change…
What Is Crimson Contagion?
By Jeffrey A. Tucker | Brownstone Institute | December 22, 2022
The lockdowns of March 2020 shocked the American people and most public health agencies, not to mention infectious disease doctors. The idea of school shutdowns, business closures, plus mandatory remote work and other restrictions have previously seemed inconceivable. It was especially remarkable to have such an “all-of-government” response to a virus that we already knew posed a threat mainly to the elderly and infirm.
Issues like public-health precedent, American legal tradition, and medical knowledge about dealing with respiratory viruses, not to mention natural immunity and collateral damage of lockdowns, were all thrown out the window.
Robert Kennedy, Jr.’s book The Real Anthony Fauci mentions a tabletop exercise called Crimson Contagion that ran from January through August, 2019. I had not previously heard of it and I found the mention remarkable, simply because it proves that not everyone was shocked by lockdowns. They were not part of official planning documents of either the CDC or WHO but they were clearly in the plans of someone.
I’ve only followed up on this report in light of growing focus on the person who coordinated Crimson Contagion: Robert Kadlec, who served in the Trump administration as Assistant Secretary of Health and Human Services, Preparedness and Response. It was he who also ran the Covid response between HHS and the Department of Homeland Security.
Kadec’s lifetime government service (and, yes, he is said to be CIA) extends all the way back to the G.W. Bush administration when in 2007 he took the position of Special Assistant to the President and Senior Director for Biodefense Policy on the Homeland Security Council from 2007 to 2009. The very notion of lockdowns originated in that administration.
The 2019 tabletop exercise involved a huge number of public-sector agencies across all states plus many private-sector associations. It postulated a disease scenario in which a respiratory virus begins in China and spreads around the world by air travelers. It is first detected in Chicago. The World Health Organization declares a pandemic 47 days later. But then it was too late: 110 million Americans became sick, with 7.7 million hospitalized and 586,000 dead.
The conclusion of the exercise was that government was not well prepared for a pandemic and urged more planning and fast acting to implement what we now call lockdowns as we await a vaccine. Presumably, the vaccine then fixes everything.
The public knew nothing of this exercise until March 19, 2020, when the New York Times reported on it for the first time. This was one day following the detailed release of stay-at-home orders by the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency. The next day, National Public Radio also ran a report on Crimson Contagion.
The Times reported:
The Crimson Contagion planning exercise run last year by the Department of Health and Human Services involved officials from 12 states and at least a dozen federal agencies. They included the Pentagon, the Department of Veterans Affairs and the National Security Council. Groups like the American Red Cross and American Nurses Association were invited to join, as were health insurance companies and major hospitals like the Mayo Clinic.
The war game-like exercise was overseen by Robert P. Kadlec, a former Air Force physician who has spent decades focused on biodefense issues. After stints on the Bush administration’s Homeland Security Council and the staff of the Senate Intelligence Committee, he was appointed assistant secretary of Health and Human Services for Preparedness and Response.
Also participating were former Trump administration officials Rex Tillerson (Secretary of State, 2017-2018) and John F. Kelly, who was White House chief of staff from 2017 to 2019. The NYT even ran a picture of the two of them at the event.
Here are some direct quotes from the October 2019 report of Crimson Contagion:
The exercise revealed several workforce protection challenges under conditions where medical countermeasures, such as the pandemic vaccine, antiviral medications, and personal protective equipment, are limited. To protect the public prior to vaccine distribution, public health officials issued guidance on the implementation of nonpharmaceutical interventions intended to slow the spread of the virus.
In keeping with non-pharmaceutical intervention recommendations, employers – including government entities – sought to practice social distancing by having a significant portion of their employees work remotely. Employers encountered cascading impacts associated with making, communicating, and implementing such work-distancing decisions.
At multiple levels of government, officials wrestled with identifying employees who are essential and those who are nonessential in the context of an incident forecasted to span many months. In addition, officials faced challenges in determining which employees could perform their duties remotely and hierarchical organizations, such as state and federal departments and agencies, were uncertain as to the process for determining and implementing remote-workforce decisions.
Also:
During the exercise, CDC recommended that states delay school openings for six weeks, a follow-up to the initial (pre-exercise) recommendation that states delay the opening of schools for two weeks if the disease is present in the area. Many local jurisdictions and school districts have the authority to decide to close schools (or keep schools open). This distributed approach to school closure decisions caused confusion centered on discrepancies between schools that remained open and those that closed. In addition, while school delays and dismissals may be necessary over the course of the pandemic response, state participants identified any continued school delays and dismissals as having serious cascading impacts that require a concerted public messaging campaign and government coordination. Multiple states realized that dismissing schools is much more complex than they previously appreciated.
The participating private sector organizations and businesses:
- Aetna
- Allegheny Health Network
- Amador Health Center
- American Hospital Association
- American Red Cross
- Association of Public Health Laboratories
- Association of State and Territorial Health Officials Carestream Health
- Council of State and Territorial Epidemiologists
- Ephraim McDowell/James B. Haggin Hospital
- Giant Eagle Pharmacy
- Grand Strand Health/HCA
- Health Information Sharing and Analysis Center Healthcare and Public Health Sector Coordinating Council Healthcare Ready
- International Safety Equipment Association
- Juvare
- Kidney Community Emergency Response Program
- Mayo Clinic
- Moldex-Metric Inc.
- National Alliance of State Pharmacy Associations National Association of County and City Health Officials
- National Community Pharmacists Association
- National Indian Health Board
- North Shore University Health System Patients’ Hospital
- RBC Limited
- San Mateo County Health – EMS Agency Seqirus Inc., USA
- Spectrum Health
- TriStar Skyline Medical Center
- University of Minnesota
This exercise took place entirely out of the public eye but had strangely prescient foretelling of events only 5 months later. Kadlec, who had organized the entire tabletop exercise, was also later the author of the U.S. Senate Committee on Health Education, Labor and Pensions report: An Analysis of the Origins of the COVID-19 Pandemic, which came out earlier this year.
Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., reports: “second only to his longtime crony and comrade in arms Anthony Fauci, Robert Kadlec played a historic leadership role in fomenting the contagious logic that infectious disease posed a national security threat requiring a militarized response.”
He is the signer of the report to HHS, in a letter dated December 9, 2019:
By the time of this letter, US intelligence already knew of the Wuhan virus. Four months later, US lockdowns began, starting with the March 8th cancellation of South-by-Southwest by the Austin, Texas mayor, and extending to the March 12th imposition of travel restrictions, the March 13 takeover by FEMA, and the March 16th press conference by Trump, Fauci, and Deborah Birx, which announced nationwide lockdowns.
The same day, Politico ran an article about another pandemic exercise from 2017 in which some incoming Trump officials participated, including Kelly and Tillerson. The article claims that such exercises are required by law. By the time of Covid lockdowns, they had both been pushed out, only to reemerge as key participants in Crimson Contagion along with most national-security and health-related agencies of the federal government.
The lockdowns – to which Trump agreed only reluctantly and were extended far past the point in which he believed they would control the virus – were the most ruinous of the administration. Trump’s pollsters for 2020 all agreed that these lockdowns created the conditions that drove him from office.
What does it all mean? Perhaps it is all just a series of coincidental data points, that what is called the worst pandemic in 100 years came only a few months after an elaborate multi-agency trial run of the same in which former high officials of the Trump administration participated. And perhaps the best person to run the Covid response also happened to be the very person who organized and managed the trial run in the previous season.
Many people will surely say there is nothing to see here. There is so much not to see these days.
Featured Video
or go to
Aletho News Archives – Video-Images
Book Review
The Zeolite Book — First Edition, 2026, Paperback
The volcanic mineral medicine will not patent — for the toxic burden medicine will not name
Lies are Unbekoming – October 30, 2026
Zeolite is old. It is in Roman concrete that has held for two thousand years. It’s in the water filters of ancient cisterns. It’s in the stomachs of Pacific livestock whose keepers knew, somehow, that this grey crumbling rock made the animals healthier. It’s in Soviet clinical protocols from the 1960s. It’s in the standard emergency response to the Chernobyl explosion.
In 1986, after the Chernobyl reactor failure, the Soviet Union manufactured and distributed natural zeolite at industrial scale — for soil remediation, for livestock feed, for human consumption, for the cleanup itself. Karl Hecht, who had been director of the Institute for Experimental and Clinical Pathophysiology at the Charité of Humboldt University Berlin, spent the six decades after that building the clinical research base — on silicon’s role in human health, on zeolite’s clinical safety, on its applications in ageing. In 2018, Pavelić and colleagues published a comprehensive clinical safety review of natural clinoptilolite in Frontiers in Pharmacology. In 2019, Mastinu analysed its binding affinities. In the Western medical literature, these works sit largely uncited.
What has not been treated at book length, until now, is how a volcanic mineral with six decades of Soviet clinical work behind it, two major peer-reviewed Western reviews, and ongoing clinical use across the former Eastern Bloc, remains almost entirely absent from Western medical practice — and what the toxic burden it’s meant to address actually is.
The Zeolite Book gathers the Soviet clinical record, the Western peer-reviewed studies, three contemporary practitioner voices, and three serious counterviews into one honest treatment. That’s why the book runs to seven appendices. 288 pages, four parts, three practitioner voices, three counterviews, seven appendices. The honest treatment is the argument.
Blog Roll
Aletho News- Wrong, AP and NPR: Europe’s 50,000 Heat Deaths Are a Computer-Model Estimate, Not a Real Body Count
- Questioning Your Doctor Is Now Considered A Psychological Problem (Seriously)
- London tourism expo promotes Israeli agency linked to theft of Palestinian land
- Dockworkers launch global strike against Israeli and US military shipments
- Europe facing gas price shock – Gazprom chief
- Ukraine continues recruiting people with disabilities
- Weaponized Journalism: 2021 Sayer Ji Interview with NPR
- Beyond Netanyahu: what Israel’s election means for Palestinians
- Lithuania plans universal conscription
- Lies, Damn Lies, and Ukraine News
- If Americans Knew
- An error has occurred; the feed is probably down. Try again later.
- No Tricks Zone
- Germany’s Green Energy Transition Becoming Increasingly Expensive…Another 6 Trillion Euros!
- Sudden Stratospheric Warming, Powerful El Niño Combination May Lead To Extreme Europe Cold, Energy Crisis!
- Two New Studies Find Thwaites Glacier Melt Cannot Be Driven By Human Activity Or A Warming Ocean
- E-Cars Reduce CO2 Emissions By Only 41% Compared To Internal Combustion Engine Vehicles
- Predictions Made By Renowned Climate Professor Over Past Decades Have Been Proven To Be Poor
- New Study Suggests Large Regions Of The Pacific Ocean Have Been Cooling For The Last 80 Years
- Germany’s Green Energy Debacle: High Energy Costs Force Kahla Porzellan to Close After 182 Years!
- New Study: 50 Years Of The Most Aggressive ‘Net Zero’ Policies Can Only Affect The Global Climate By 0.03°C
- US September “Heat” Was No Record…Many Records Set Decades Ago
- Latest European Green Energy Debacle; Portugal’s Largest Flagship Solar Park Insolvent!
