The UN Smothers the Peoples with Compassion
By Thi Thuy Van Dinh and David Bell | Brownstone Institute | June 27, 2024
“We The Peoples of the United Nations determined (…) to promote social progress and better standards of life in larger freedom,”
United Nations Charter Preamble (1945)
The United Nations (UN) Secretariat will hold the next Summit of the Future in New York on 22-23 September 2024. It is a vast political program covering the noblest of causes including poverty reduction, human rights, environment, climate change, development, and the welfare and rights of children, youth, and women. World leaders are expected to endorse a declaratory Pact for the Future, and commit to act toward its realization.
It all looks wonderful. As in days of old, the rich, powerful, and entitled are coming to rescue us from ourselves and make us live better lives. Freedom, after all, is intrinsically unsafe.
This is the first in a series that will look at the plans of the UN system designing and implementing this new agenda, covering implications for global health, economic development, and human rights.
Amidst all the hype and posturing regarding the negotiations on pandemic texts at the recent 77th World Health Assembly (WHA) in Geneva (Switzerland), perhaps the most consequential resolution before the WHA slipped through, approved, but virtually unnoticed. The Resolution WHA77.14 on Climate Change and Health was approved without debate, opening the door for the World Health Organization (WHO) ─ a UN specialized agency ─ to claim a broad swath of normal human activity as a potential threat to health, and therefore coming under the purview of the WHO’s detached business-class bureaucrats.
It was highlighted by a Strategic Roundtable on “Climate change and health: a global vision for joint action,” where speakers, moderated by the Lancet’s Editor-in-Chief Richard Horton, included WHO Director-General (DG) Tedros Ghebreyesus, former US Vice President Al Gore (by video message), and CEO of the 28th Climate Conference of States Parties Adnan Amin.
The Resolution was proposed by a coalition of 16 countries (Barbados, Brazil, Chile, Ecuador, Fiji, Georgia, Kenya, Moldova, Monaco, Netherlands, Panama, Peru, Philippines, Slovenia, United Arab Emirates, and the UK) and passed without changes, mandating the DG to: i) develop a “results-based, needs-oriented and capabilities-driven global WHO plan of action on climate change and health,” ii) serve as a global leader in the field of climate change and health by establishing a WHO Roadmap to Net Zero by 2030, and iii) report back to future WHA sessions.
United Nations System’s “Newspeak” on Climate Change
There is little surprise in this. It is another predictable move on the global climate chessboard. In the last decade, activities and documents from the UN system have increasingly included climate change as a “newspeak” to signal full compliance with the official narrative.
The head of the UN system, Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, is known for pushing the narrative further. In 2019, he posed in water for a picture for Time Magazine’s coverage on “Our sinking planet.” Last summer, he announced that “the era of global warming has ended…the era of global boiling has arrived.”
On 2024 World Environment Day (5th June), he doubled down on his rhetoric: “In the case of climate, we are not the dinosaurs. We are the meteor. We are not only in danger. We are the danger.” We are, it appears, a poison on our planet.
Satellite entities have wildly added their creativity and imagination: UNEP hammering on the “triple planetary crisis of climate change, nature and biodiversity loss,” UNICEF reporting on the “climate changed-child,” UNWOMEN discovering the “interconnection between climate change and gender inequality,” OHCHR claiming that “climate change threatens the effective enjoyment of a range of human rights including those to life, water and sanitation, food, health, housing, self-determination, culture and development,” and UNESCO fully committed “to addressing the impact of climate change on culture, and to enhancing the potential of culture for global climate action.”
Nomination of First Ever WHO Special Envoy for Climate Change and Health
As for WHO, DG Tedros Ghebreyesus has also demonstrated his mastery of dogmatic claims. Climate change, he insists, constitutes “one of the biggest health threats” and “the climate crisis is a health crisis.” His mandate has therefore been broadened from specific environmental issues including air pollution from particulates and chemicals to the whole climate change spectrum. In 2023, the WHO estimated that “between 2030 and 2050, climate change is expected to cause approximately 250,000 additional deaths per year, from undernutrition, malaria, diarrhoea and heat stress alone.”
Strangely, however, deaths attributable to cold weather, estimated at 4.6 million globally per year, were not weighed in balance. Nor are inevitable deaths from undernutrition related to a lack of accessible energy for agriculture and transport. Accounting for a reduction in such deaths would significantly reduce projected mortality and perhaps demonstrate an overall advantage. For instance, rising CO2 has increased plant growth and contributed to the world’s ability to feed 8 billion people, an achievement once considered impossible and is obviously highly critical to maintaining health.
The WHO’s leaders have become bolder. In June 2023, in a minor lapse of equity, inclusion, and transparency criteria, the DG appointed Dr Vanessa Kerry as “the first ever” Special Envoy for Climate Change and Health for being “a renowned global health expert and medical doctor and CEO of Seed Global Health.” The press release overlooked any connection with her father, former US Secretary of State John Kerry ─ a key US Democratic politician, well-known personality at UN climate forums, and first-ever US Presidential Envoy for Climate (January 2021-March 2024). Her nomination, apparently, was purely meritocratic.
It is estimated that $27.6 million is required to create the reports implementing the 2024 Resolution. Now, $20 million will come from WHO’s biennial 2024-25 budget, and the gap of $7.6 million will be raised through WHO’s continued “discussions with Member States, development agencies and philanthropic organizations.” People who will, perhaps, benefit from the WHO pushing the products they have invested in, such as heavily processed substitutes to (climate-harming) natural foods.
Misleading Resolution WHA77.14 on the “Link between Health, Environment and Climate Change”
All of this appears to follow conventional political and diplomatic playbooks. It comes unstuck if one applies a critical look at how Resolution WHA77.14 was built.
It referred to Resolution WHA61.19 (adopted in 2008) on climate change and health, Resolution WHA68.8 (adopted in 2005) addressing the health impact of air pollution, and Resolution WHA76.17 (adopted in 2023) on the impact of chemicals, waste, and pollution on human health as follows.
Recalling resolution WHA61.19 (2008) on climate change and health and welcoming the work carried out so far by WHO in pursuit of it;
Recalling also resolution WHA68.8 (2015) on addressing the health impact of air pollution and resolution WHA76.17 (2023) on the impact of chemicals, waste and pollution on human health, which recognize the link between health, environment and climate change;
Resolution WHA61.19 was adopted based on a WHO report “Climate change and health.” This report stated that “There is now a strong, global scientific consensus that warming of the climate system is unequivocal, and is caused by human activity, primarily the burning of fossil fuels which releases greenhouse gases into the atmosphere” (para. 1) and that “WHO has, for several years, stressed that the health risks posed by climate change are significant, distributed throughout the globe, and difficult to reverse” (para. 2). These affirmations were made without assessment of levels of evidence (strong, moderate, weak), of the extent to which (modifiable) human activity is involved, or of the actual positive versus negative impacts of higher temperatures (and atmospheric CO2).
Contrary to the statements by Resolution WHA77.14, neither Resolution WHA68.8 nor Resolution WHA76.17 mentioned climate change in the context of pollutants. Excluding rare natural phenomena, particulate and chemical air pollution do result from human activities, including indoor air pollution (e.g. cookstoves) and transport and industrial waste. Hence, these past Resolutions recognized a link between these pollutants and human health, which is common sense. They did not recognize a link between health, environment, and climate change.
Nevertheless, we can probably relax and wait. The WHO’s upcoming reports can be expected to claim a link. They have $27 million to spend on that.
The Climate Agenda Versus “We the Peoples”
It is easy for wealthy self-proclaimed philanthropists and international and governmental bureaucrats to call for phasing out fossil fuels. Living on tax-paid salaries in secure jobs, in economies made rich through the availability of cheap energy, they are able to renew their commitment annually at the Conference of States Parties (COP) to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, ignoring the reality that their very ability to be there is due to fossil fuels. The most recent venues ─ Dubai, Sharm-El-Sheik, and Glasgow ─ all built their prosperity on this same energy base.
Being obsessed with the man-made climate narrative, the UN system pushes poor countries to adopt green energies for lighting and cooking, rather than developing the large-scale energy infrastructure that still forms the backbone of wealthier societies.
There seems to be no shame vis-a-vis 2.3 billion people on earth that, according to the WHO, must still rely on dirty and dangerous cooking fuels such as cow dung, charcoal, and wood ─ negatively impacting women and children’s health through particulate air pollution. Increasing the cost of fossil fuels directly increases further deforestation and resultant desertification (and regional climate change) in areas such as East Africa. It feels good, apparently, for the activists of climate COPs and Extinction Rebellion to force African women to walk further each day for firewood, denuding landscapes and their meager savings.
There seems to be no shame either when Western bilateral and multilateral largesse to low-income countries comes on the condition that they pass a “climate check,” or must be spent on developing “green” but unreliable solar and wind generation which barely supplement the base energy supplies of most donor countries. We happily burn Nigerian oil, but our virtue requires Nigerians to do better. After looting wealth through colonialism, this is rubbing noses in the dirt of the poverty left behind.
One can confidently predict that the rhetoric will continue, and more “soft laws” ─ UN declarations, strategies, plans-of-action, and agendas ─ will complement the existing “hard laws” of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change and its Protocols. At the WHO, more funding will come to extend the growing industry of climate change and health, diverting financial and human resources from far greater, but less boutique, health burdens.
A plan of action will be put before a future WHA to agree to a binding document seeking to harden the 2024 Resolution into requirements. Highly questionable assumptions that pandemics and malaria, and even tuberculosis, are worsened because of climate change will be drawn to support the global plan, complementing the coming Pandemic Agreement and the massive surveillance system set up by the freshly adopted IHR Amendments to ensure pandemic lockdowns.
Malaria, tuberculosis, and diseases of undernutrition and poor hygiene are primarily diseases of poverty. People in wealthy countries live longer primarily because of improvements in sanitation, living conditions, and nutrition. These improvements were achieved by using energy for transport, to build infrastructure, and to massively improve the efficiency of agricultural production. Locking future generations in low-income countries into poverty will not improve their health and well-being.
This increasingly charade-like global health circus will, in the end, destabilize the world and harm us all. To address complex issues, the world needs rational and honest debates, rather than games played by a self-entitled few. The WHO is demonstrating that it is no longer the organization to lead us to better health. It is on us to regain control of our own future.
WHO Plans More ‘Health Promoting Schools’ — Critics Say More Vaccines, Less Parental Control Are Fueling the Plan
By Michael Nevradakis, Ph.D. | The Defender | June 7, 2024
The World Health Organization (WHO) is expanding its “health promoting schools” initiative worldwide, citing flagging vaccination rates and the need to provide medical services to underprivileged children and combat alleged misinformation.
The COVID-19 pandemic is behind the latest push to expand its “Making Every School a Health Promoting School” program, the WHO said, citing “the largest disruption of education systems in history” and “the health effects of mass school closures” and other pandemic-related disruptions.
The agency said the initiative aims to “serve over 2.3 billion school-age children” worldwide.
But critics say that behind the WHO’s noble-sounding plan to expand health-promoting schools — also known as school-based health centers (SBHCs) — is an attempt to gain “a foothold in our schools,” to bypass parental consent and expand vaccination, data collection and surveillance.
Laura Sextro, CEO and chief operating officer of The Unity Project, a California-based health freedom and parental rights nonprofit, told The Defender that SBHCs are “very, very agenda-driven organizations within the school system.”
Sextro said SBHCs “will cover everything from sex education [to] radical gender ideology. They’ll be talking about driving vaccines … That is something that frankly parents should have the autonomy” over.
Valerie Borek, associate director and lead policy analyst for Stand For Health Freedom, said SBHCs will promote “vaccines, especially COVID, HPV, and influenza.”
“School-based health centers have no place in public schools,” said Sheila Matthews, co-founder of AbleChild: Parents for Label and Drug Free Education. Matthews alleged the centers allow “Big Pharma access to our children, who are a captive audience.”
Nigel Utton, a board member of the World Freedom Alliance and coordinator of its Education Charter, said the WHO can’t be trusted to support the health of young people. “If it did, no child in the world would live in unsanitary conditions, or be subjected to trafficking, poor nutrition or emotional intimidation within school systems,” he said.
“Instead, the WHO wastes enormous resources on forcing vaccination programs — injecting children with dangerous chemicals including animal proteins, heavy metals and other unspecified ingredients,” Utton added.
Critics also question the involvement of private interests in SBHCs, including the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation — and Bill and Melinda Gates themselves — in promoting SBHCs and funding the WHO’s reports on the subject.
School-based health centers give ‘Big Pharma access to our children’
SBHCs aren’t new — the concept dates back to the 1970s. The WHO, UNESCO and UNICEF have actively promoted such programs since 1995.
SBHCs are intended to offer “primary care, mental health care, and other health services in schools,” particularly in underserved communities. This includes services such as immunizations and “well-child care.”
A 2020 paper in Health Promotion Perspectives, whose lead author, Manuela Pulimeno, Ph.D., is UNESCO’s chair on health education and sustainable development, said health-promoting schools help “integrate health educational goals in a holistic perspective at school” and have shown positive outcomes.
“To achieve this goal, health-related contents may be embedded in the school curricula as core discipline,” the paper states.
The American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) has endorsed SBHCs, stating they “improve access to health care services for students by decreasing financial, geographic, age, and cultural barriers.”
In the U.S., the School-Based Health Alliance promotes SBHCs. According to the alliance, about 3,900 SBHCs operate nationally, up from around 1,900 in 2012. A September 2023 study in JAMA Network Open called for “additional SBHC expansion.”
In 2022, the Biden administration issued $75 million in grants to states to expand SBHCs, while the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention incorporated SBHCs into its “Whole School, Whole Community, Whole Child” model.
On a global level, “work is currently underway with early adopter countries such as Egypt, Kenya, North Macedonia and Paraguay to support governments in building a new generation of school health programmes,” the WHO said in a May 26 report.
WHO’s global standards for SBHCs include censorship and surveillance
In their report, the WHO developed eight “global standards” for SBHCs (page 3), in which school health services represent just one such standard. Other standards include school and government policies, school governance and leadership, school and community partnerships, schools social-emotional and physical environments and curriculum.
These are accompanied by 13 “implementation areas,” (page 17) calling for reinforcement of “intersectoral government and multi-stakeholder coordination,” strengthening “school and community partnerships,” curriculum development, “teacher training and professional learning” and monitoring and evaluation.
Critics say these proposals allow schools to implement vaccine programs. For instance, SBHCs have been linked to higher human papillomavirus (HPV) vaccination rates, according to a 2022 report.
Merck, the maker of the Gardasil HPV vaccine, is a funder of the School-Based Health Alliance, whose board includes several members with ties to Big Pharma and vaccine-promoting organizations.
The Gardasil HPV vaccine is often administered to teenagers as part of school vaccination programs. In October 2023, a 12-year-old boy in France died days after collapsing and injuring himself minutes after HPV vaccination at his school.
In the U.S., several state and city government websites include vaccinations among the list of services SBHCs provide.
“Increased vaccine uptake is a mark of success for school-based health programs,” Borek said. “They’re considered an optimal place to promote and administer vaccines. In fact, schools and vaccine policy go hand in hand historically — vaccines didn’t have a strong foothold until schools mandated them for admission.”
Utton pointed out that “schools have been used to coerce and manipulate children into taking vaccinations against the will of their parents. Teachers have been indoctrinated, and those who have questioned the manipulative agenda have been ostracized.”
Borek said the “psychological pressure” a child experiences when a school authority figure recommends any kind of medical care creates a “fertile ground for pushing policy.”
SBHCs ‘will certainly be a tool to collect data’
Included among the WHO’s global standards for SBHCs are interventions in school curriculums and proposals to “embed school health content” in training for educators.
The 2020 Health Promotion Perspectives paper said the WHO calls for the incorporation of “health literacy” in “the core curriculum as children enter school.”
Critics told The Defender that changes like these could lead to the inclusion of non-health-related topics in school curricula under the guise of health education.
Virginie de Araujo-Recchia, a French lawyer and member of ONEST, France’s National Organization of Ethics, Health and Transparency, told The Defender that SBHCs may be “favored by the political powers in an attempt to achieve a fusion between education, citizenship and environmental causes.”
The WHO’s global standards for SBHCs also target “misinformation.” According to UNESCO, SBHCs “can … teach young people develop the critical thinking skills they need to reject harmful health-related myths and misconceptions,” noting that “This is a key in responding to pandemics like Covid-19 and HIV.”
The global standards call on schools to develop “versatile physical spaces that can be adapted to changing restrictions, as in managing the COVID-19 pandemic.”
The WHO’s global standards also contain provisions for increased data collection and surveillance in schools, with the 13th “implementation area” calling on schools to “Design, develop and share practices for collecting, storing and analysing data.”
This is linked to calls to provide “capacity-building in evaluation (e.g. data collection and analysis)” and investments “in feasible … interoperable systems for collecting and storing data from monitoring at all levels of the education and/or health system.”
According to Stand for Health Freedom, SBHCs are “completely unregulated” in the U.S.
For instance, it is unclear how HIPAA (the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996) andthe Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act will be applied to SBHCs and students’ health information.
SBHCs “will certainly be a tool to collect data on anything from vaccine status to sexual preference,” Sextro said.
Children can become ‘health trainers of their parents’
The WHO claims SBHCs involve “all stakeholders, and particularly students, parents and caregivers.” The agency’s global standards call for “opportunities for parents … to participate meaningfully in the governance, design, implementation and evaluation” of SBHCs and their inclusion on “design teams” and governance boards.
But the WHO appears to contradict itself, excluding parents from the “system of global standards for health-promoting schools” and noting that the “target readership” of its SBHC-related documents is “mainly people in government.”
According to Nemours KidsHealth, the centers “only provide care to children with parents’ written permission.” However, the organization notes that this “permission” usually consists of “the option to sign a permission form at the beginning of each school year.”
A consent form for an Atlanta SBHC shared with The Defender says nothing about parents being notified before, during or after treatment. Last year, a Connecticut school board was sued for rejecting a government-funded school-based mental health clinic that aimed to treat teens without parental consent.
“The reason they’re doing this is because they don’t want parents to be able to exercise their rights, which is to … make medically informed decisions on behalf of their children. And so, they’re usurping the parents,” Sextro said.
“Parents need to be front and center in their child’s medical care,” Borek said. “These centers are cleaving that relationship by promoting medical assessments and treatment without the presence of a parent.”
A proposed bill in New Hampshire (SB 343) would require parents to be present when services are provided at an SBHC.
“Schools are clearly not the place to introduce school health centers,” de Araujo-Recchia said. “Our children are neither guinea pigs for mass medical experimentation nor beings to be sacrificed.”
Notably, UNESCO suggests SBHCs can help children “educate” their parents on health matters. According to the 2020 Health Promotion Perspectives paper, SBHCs can help children “become health trainers of their parents, relatives and friends, impacting positively the entire society.”
Gates ‘has a direct financial benefit’ from SBHCs
Earlier this year, Melinda French Gates announced a $23 million investment in the School-Based Health Alliance, alongside fellow billionaire MacKenzie Scott, ex-wife of Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos.
The Gates Foundation has also provided financial support for the publication of at least two WHO reports on SBHCs.
“The Gates Foundation and Gavi, The Vaccine Alliance [founded and funded by Gates] fiercely promote childhood vaccination, and make a lot of money from it,” de Araujo-Recchia said. “This is not philanthropy at all, but a stranglehold and ideology,” citing the WHO’s partnership with the Rockefeller Foundation as another example.
Sextro said Gates “has a direct financial benefit and interest in promoting these school-based health centers, because they will directly promote everything from the pharmaceutical to the vaccine interest that he and the Gates Foundation have.”
The WHO’s global standards for SBHCs include calls for the delivery of “comprehensive school health services based on a formal agreement between schools (or local education departments) and health service providers.”
According to the School-Based Health Alliance, 21% of funding for SBHCs in the U.S. came from private foundations in 2022, while according to the AAP, “local hospitals [may] provide … financial support for SBHCs.”
The WHO “is mainly financed by private funds from companies or foundations owning pharmaceutical labs,” de Araujo-Recchia said. “The capital links between the mainstream media, digital giants, American financial giants and the WHO demonstrate real collusion.”
Michael Nevradakis, Ph.D., based in Athens, Greece, is a senior reporter for The Defender and part of the rotation of hosts for CHD.TV’s “Good Morning CHD.”
This article was originally published by The Defender — Children’s Health Defense’s News & Views Website under Creative Commons license CC BY-NC-ND 4.0. Please consider subscribing to The Defender or donating to Children’s Health Defense.
The WHO pandemic treaty: dead but not buried
BY KEVIN BARDOSH | UNHERD | MAY 28, 2024
As the World Health Assembly began this week in Geneva, it was announced that member states had failed to reach agreement on a new, legally binding pandemic treaty.
Despite not reaching the deadline after more than two years of negotiations, the WHO Director-General, Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, remained confident that the 194 member states would eventually reach an agreement, perhaps in six to 12 months. Health diplomats are also confident that amendments to the 2005 International Health Regulations (IHR) — a parallel set of global governance rules, including a new tiered system to declare a pandemic — will go ahead this week. We will have to wait and see.
Front and centre in the failure of the treaty this week were disputes between the Global North and South regarding pathogen sharing and access to the new tests, treatments and vaccines that would be developed by the pharmaceutical industry in the event of a new pandemic. This rekindled longstanding neocolonial sentiments, especially among African countries, concerned that access to pharmaceutical products would be dependent on fulfilling treaty obligations.
Recent analyses have also shown that, to meet basic targets of the treaty, developing countries would need to heavily invest in pandemic preparedness and response to the tune of some $31 billion per year. This level of financing would take away vital budgets from existing health systems and skew national priorities. Is this really in the best interest of developing countries?
Other criticisms of the treaty have come from US and UK conservatives. Senate Republicans recently called for the Biden administration to reject the treaty and shift focus to “comprehensive WHO reforms that address its persistent failures without expanding its authority”. With US elections set for November, negotiators in Geneva are well aware that Donald Trump may withdraw from the WHO if elected, as he did in 2020. In the UK, Nigel Farage also came out against the treaty, expressing concern about future WHO-supported lockdowns: “The WHO can be a force for good in the world, but only if it returns to its noble principles and core objectives.”
Yet the WHO has vehemently rejected any concerns about the treaty infringing on “national sovereignty”, previously calling them “fake news, lies, and conspiracy theories”. Mainstream news outlets — from the New York Times to Reuters — have reiterated these talking points. Recent articles in Health Policy Watch called for critics, or rather “spreaders of disinformation”, to be treated like an “organised crime” network. Any legitimate criticism is unwelcome.
Those in global health leadership want bolder steps to manage the “infodemic”. But advocates of the treaty have regularly engaged in misinformation themselves. Take, for example, a recent video from former UK prime minister Gordon Brown, now WHO Ambassador for Global Health Financing. In the video, Brown makes the bold claim that “the world needs agreement on the pandemic accord” since “no one is safe anywhere until everyone is safe everywhere”. The latter statement is a perfect illustration of the propaganda tools used by governments in the name of “health” during Covid: utopian, illogical, and Orwellian.
The negotiations and media framing of them, therefore, represent the cultural ethos of biosecurity, which prioritises “making the world safer” (security) over all other values and, given our collective experiences during Covid, basic principles of logic and Western democratic norms.
The WHO is also, this week, seeking an unprecedented increase of its budget by $7 billion over four years to respond to crises. Yet the organisation has failed to conduct a serious post-mortem of the failures of the Covid pandemic response. Instead, media outlets and health authorities complain about “mistrust” and “populism” without any mention of the harms of vaccine mandates and coercive and ineffective lockdowns, school closures, mask mandates, and other Covid measures. We must march forward into a global treaty, no questions asked.
Yet this problem is now systemic in global public health. Many preeminent Covid evaluation reports are deeply flawed. A recent paper called the UK Royal Society’s assessment, published last year, “irrelevant and weak from a methodological point of view but also dangerously misleading in terms of policymaking. This is how misinformation occurs.”
Many countries, the UK and US included, are still in the process of evaluating their Covid response. Others have none planned. It seems more than reasonable that the global public health community should first be obliged to take a serious, evidence-based look at just how wrong the experts got it from 2020-22. But to do that, we need the WHO to be less concerned about fighting “conspiracy theorists” and “far-Right nationalists” and more concerned about earning back the trust of the world’s public. It will be a long road ahead.
Kevin Bardosh is a research professor and Director of Research for Collateral Global, a UK-based charity dedicated to understanding the collateral impacts of Covid policies worldwide.
15 nations have made their position on the WHO sovereignty grab public before the WHA meeting commences
How many other countries are entirely fed up with the World Stealth Organization’s misleading spin about “equity”?
BY MERYL NASS | MAY 12, 2024
The negotiations have been controlled by globalists, not nations, from day one.
Eleven nations informed the UN General Assembly they were not going along with the UN’s support for the WHO Pandemic Preparedness Agenda last September. In alphabetical order:
- Belarus
- Bolivia
- Cuba
- Democratic People’s Republic of Korea
- Eritrea
- Islamic Republic of Iran
- Nicaragua
- Russian Federation
- Syrian Arab Republic
- Venezuela
- Zimbabwe
The Netherlands’ government has been instructed to delay the WHO votes or vote No by the lower house of Parliament.
Slovakia said it will not sign current drafts of both documents.
Croatia’s new majority party is against the WHO’s pandemic preparedness plan
Italy’s Senator Borghi said Italy will vote No on the treaty and furthermore that there are 10 more months in which to reject the IHR Amendments.
It is very unusual to have this level of disagreement made public even before the start of the World Health Assembly meeting. And with “hybrid negotiations” aka backroom horse-trading, leading right up to the meeting, nobody will have time to consider the treaties before they are due to be voted on. It has been a corrupt process from start to finish. It could only succeed with stealth (no one knowing what is really in the treaties) and bribes.
Now that the US has announced that 100 countries are being paid off to develop their pandemic preparedness agenda, will the bribes be enough to get these treaties across the finish line? Will the unbribed be miffed? How much will it cost the US taxpayer for the world’s nations to agree to dictatorial control of pandemics and health information going forward?
Attempts to impose control over us “for pandemics” are being implemented at the state, federal, and World level
Newest versions of the treaty and amendments included, all these laws need to be revoked or (at the WHO) stopped
BY MERYL NASS | MAY 4, 2024
Laws that almost all states passed after 9/11/01, drafted by Georgetown health law professor Lawrence O. Gostin, paid for by the CDC, were unconstitutional many have said. Then Gostin bragged about his bill in the JAMA.

Then Congress passed the PREP Act in 2005, which for the first time allowed the widespread use of unlicensed drugs and vaccines.
The US federal government passed the International Pandemic Preparedness Act in December 2022. Probably few Congress members knew anything about these 18 pages in the middle of a 1700 page DOD funding bill.

The WHO Pandemic Agreement (treaty) and International Health Regulation amendments are designed to globalize control of public health emergencies, expand the range of what kinds of emergencies would come under the WHO’s jurisdiction, and place essentially all decisions into the hands of the WHO Director-General, who currently is not a physician. Who would give him his marching orders? Bill Gates? The rest of the WHO organization has no expertise in managing pandemics, and yet it proposes to manage the public health of 8 billion people, using a one-size-fits-all approach.
Lawrence O. Gostin, who was hired by CDC 25 years ago to craft the laws that made governors dictators during the COVID pandemic, is now assisting the WHO to craft its new instruments of control, but this time on a global level.
Here are the latest versions of each document, with highlights I made for myself. These need to be shot down BEFORE they are enacted, unlike the 3 US bills mentioned above, which are still active and are likely to be used during the “next” designated pandemic.
April 2024 Bureau text of the amended IHR.
April 2024 draft pandemic Treaty
States Move to Oppose WHO’s ‘Pandemic Treaty,’ Assert States’ Rights
By Michael Nevradakis, Ph.D. | The Defender | April 29, 2024
Two states have passed laws — and two states have bills pending — intended to prevent the World Health Organization (WHO) from overriding states’ authority on matters of public health policy.
Utah and Florida passed laws and Louisiana and Oklahoma have legislation set to take effect soon pending final votes. Several other states are considering similar bills.
The WHO member states will convene next month at the World Health Assembly in Geneva, Switzerland, to vote on two proposals — the so-called “pandemic accord” or “pandemic treaty,” and amendments to the International Health Regulations (IHR) — that would give the WHO sweeping new pandemic powers.
The Biden administration supports the two WHO proposals, but opposition is growing at the state level.
Proponents of the WHO’s proposals say they are vital for preparing humanity against the “next pandemic,” perhaps caused by a yet-unknown “Disease X.”
But the bills passed by state legislatures reflect frequently voiced criticisms that the WHO’s proposals imperil national sovereignty, medical and bodily sovereignty and personal liberties, and may lead to global vaccine mandates.
Critics also argue the WHO proposals may open the door to global digital “health passports” and global censorship targeting alleged “misinformation.”
Such criticisms are behind state legislative initiatives to oppose the WHO, on the basis that states’ rights are protected under the 10th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution. Under the 10th Amendment, all powers not delegated to the federal government are reserved to the states. Such powers, critics say, include public health policy.
Mary Holland, president of Children’s Health Defense (CHD), told The Defender :
“It is encouraging to see states like Louisiana, Oklahoma and Utah pass resolutions to clarify that the WHO has no power to determine health policy in their states. Historically, health has been the purview of state and local government, not the U.S. federal government.
“There is no legitimate constitutional basis for the federal government to outsource health decision-making on pandemics to an international body. As state legislatures become aware of the WHO’s agenda, they are pushing back to assert their autonomy — and this is welcome.”
Internist Dr. Meryl Nass, founder of Door to Freedom, told The Defender that, contrary to arguments that the drafters of the constitution could not foresee future public health needs, vaccines, doctors and medicine were all in existence at the time the 10th Amendment was written. They were “deliberately left out,” she said.
This has implications for the federal government’s efforts in support of the WHO’s proposals, according to Nass. “The government doesn’t have the authority to give the WHO powers for which it lacks authority,” she said.
Tennessee state Rep. Bud Hulsey (R-Sullivan County) told The Epoch Times, “We’re almost to a place in this country that the federal government has trampled on the sovereignty of states for so long that in peoples’ minds, they have no options.”
“It’s like whatever the federal government says is the supreme law of the land, and it’s not. The Constitution is the supreme law of the land,” he added.
Utah, Florida laws passed
On Jan. 31, Utah Gov. Spencer Cox (R) signed Senate Bill 57, the “Utah Constitutional Sovereignty Act,” into law. It does not mention the WHO, but prohibits “enforcement of a federal directive within the state by government officers if the Legislature determines the federal directive violates the principles of state sovereignty.”
In May 2023, Florida passed Senate Bill 252 (SB 252), a bill for “Protection from Discrimination Based on Health Care Choices.” Among other clauses, it prohibits businesses and public entities from requiring proof of vaccination or prophylaxis for the purposes of employment, receipt of services, or gaining entry to such entities.
According to Section 3 of SB 252:
“A governmental entity as defined … or an educational institution … may not adopt, implement, or enforce an international health organization’s public health policies or guidelines unless authorized to do so under state law, rule, or executive order issued by the Governor.”
Nass told The Defender that Florida’s legislation offers a back door through which WHO the state can implement WHO policies because it allows a state law, rule or executive order by the governor to override the bill. According to Nass, efforts to strengthen the bill have been unsuccessful.
SB 252 was one of four bills Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) signed in May 2023 in support of medical freedom. The other bills were House Bill 1387, banning gain-of-function research, Senate Bill 1580, protecting physicians’ freedom of speech and Senate Bill 238, prohibiting discrimination on the basis of people’s medical choices.
Louisiana, Oklahoma also push back against the WHO
The Louisiana Senate on March 26 voted unanimously to pass Senate Law No. 133, barring the WHO, United Nations (U.N.) and World Economic Forum from wielding influence over the state.
According to the legislation:
“No rule, regulation, fee, tax, policy, or mandate of any kind of the World Health Organization, United Nations, and the World Economic Forum shall be enforced or implemented by the state of Louisiana or any agency, department, board, commission, political subdivision, governmental entity of the state, parish, municipality, or any other political entity.”
The bill is now pending Louisiana House of Representatives approval and if passed, is set to take effect Aug. 1.
On April 24, the Oklahoma House of Representatives passed Senate Bill 426 (SB 426), which states, “The World Health Organization, the United Nations and the World Economic Forum shall have no jurisdiction in the State of Oklahoma.”
According to the bill:
“Any mandates, recommendations, instructions, communications or guidance issued by the World Health Organization, the United Nations or the World Economic Forum shall not be used in this state as a basis for action, nor to direct, order or otherwise impose, contrary to the constitution and laws of the State of Oklahoma any requirements whatsoever, including those for masks, vaccines or medical testing, or gather any public or private information about the state’s citizens or residents, and shall have no force or effect in the State of Oklahoma.”
According to Door to Freedom, the bill was first introduced last year and unanimously passed the Senate. An amended version will return to the Senate for a new vote, and if passed, the law will take effect June 1.
Legislative push continues in states where bills opposing the WHO failed
Legislative initiatives opposing the WHO in other states have so far been unsuccessful.
In Tennessee, lawmakers proposed three bills opposing the WHO, but “none of them made it over the finish line,” said Bernadette Pajer of the CHD Tennessee Chapter.
“Many Tennessee legislators are concerned about the WHO and three of them filed resolutions to protect our sovereignty,” Pajer said. “Our legislature runs on a biennium, and this was the second year, so those three bills have died. But I do expect new ones will be filed next session.”
The proposed bills were:
- House Joint Resolution 820 (HJR 820), passed in the Tennessee House of Representatives. The bill called on the federal government to “end taxpayer funding” of the WHO and reject the WHO’s two proposals.
- House Joint Resolution 1359 (HJR 1359) stalled in the Delayed Bills Committee. It proposed that “neither the World Health Organization, United Nations, nor the World Economic Forum shall have any jurisdiction or power within the State of Tennessee.”
- Senate Joint Resolution 1135 (SJR 1135) opposed “the United States’ participation in the World Health Organization (WHO) Pandemic Prevention Preparedness and Response Accord (PPPRA) and urges the Biden Administration to withdraw our nation from the PPPRA.”
Amy Miller, a registered lobbyist for Reform Pharma, told The Defender she “supported these resolutions, especially HJR 1359. She said the bill “went to a committee where the sponsor didn’t think it would come out since a unanimous vote was needed and one of the three members was a Democrat.”
Tennessee’s HJR 820 came the closest to being enacted. According to Nass, this bill was “flawed,” as it “did not assert state sovereignty or the 10th Amendment.”
Another Tennessee bill, House Bill 2795 and Senate Bill 2775, “establishes processes by which the general assembly [of the state of Tennessee] may nullify an unconstitutional federal statute, regulation, agency order, or executive order.”
According to The Epoch Times, this would give Tennessee residents “the right to demand that state legislators vote on whether or not to enforce regulations or executive orders that violate citizens’ rights under the federal or state constitutions.” The bill is tabled for “summer study” in the Senate.
In May 2023, Tennessee passed legislation opposing “net zero” proposals and the U.N. Sustainable Development Goals — which have been connected to “green” policies and the implementation of digital ID for newborn babies and for which the U.N. has set a target date of 2030 for implementation.
According to The Epoch Times, “Maine state Rep. Heidi Sampson attempted to get a ‘joint order’ passed in support of personal autonomy and against compliance with the WHO agreements, but it garnered little interest in the Democrat supermajority legislature.”
In Alabama, the Senate passed House Joint Resolution 113 opposing the WHO. The bill was reported out of committee but, according to Nass, it stalled.
Other states where similar legislation was proposed in the 2024 session or is pending include Georgia, Idaho, Iowa, Kentucky, Michigan, New Hampshire, New Jersey, South Carolina and Wyoming.
Recent Supreme Court ruling may curtail federal government’s powers
While opponents of the WHO’s proposed “pandemic agreement” and IHR amendments point to the states’ rights provision of the 10th Amendment, others argue that a 1984 U.S. Supreme Court decision in Chevron v. Natural Resources Defense Council allowed federal agencies to assert more authority to make laws.
The tide may be turning, however. According to The Epoch Times, “The current Supreme Court has taken some steps to rein in the administrative state, including the landmark decision in West Virginia v. Environmental Protection Agency, ruling that federal agencies can’t assume powers that Congress didn’t explicitly give them.”
Nass said that even in states where lawmakers have not yet proposed bills to oppose the WHO, citizens can take action, by contacting the office of their state governor, who can issue an executive order, or their attorney general, who can issue a legal opinion.
Door to Freedom has also developed a model resolution that state legislative bodies can use as the basis for their own legislation.
“It’s important for people to realize that if the federal government imposes something on the people, the people can go through their state’s powers to overturn it,” Nass said.
Michael Nevradakis, Ph.D., based in Athens, Greece, is a senior reporter for The Defender and part of the rotation of hosts for CHD.TV’s “Good Morning CHD.”
This article was originally published by The Defender — Children’s Health Defense’s News & Views Website under Creative Commons license CC BY-NC-ND 4.0. Please consider subscribing to The Defender or donating to Children’s Health Defense.
The Pandemic Agreement. The Globalist Agenda versus the Global South’s agenda
BY MERYL NASS | APRIL 30, 2024
The USA agenda for the Pandemic Agreement appears to coincide with the globalist agenda: pathogen sharing, gain-of-function research, massively increased genome sequencing for purposes yet to be acknowledged, rapid rollout of vaccines and drugs for all the new pandemics we will see (or at least hear about, such as bird flu), centralized control of health emergencies by the WHO with a new governance role for that organization. Nations will be obligated to obey the WHO. The “One Health” concept will be used to give powers to the WHO that have heretofore not been considered directly related to health, but are being redefined so they are included in “One Health”—such as the ability to issue orders in the name of protecting animals, plants, ecosystems and so-called biodiversity.
There are more poor nations than rich ones. The poor nations would like more healthcare personnel; would like to plug the “brain drain” of medical and professional personnel to the richer countries; would like more infrastructure: clinics, hospitals, laboratories. They would like some money to flow to them.
The WHO treaty is telling them it will give them a little bit: some crumbs (10%-20% of the drugs and vaccines they will need for free or at low cost). And if they play along and provide what they consider to be their own intellectual property (dangerous microorganisms discovered on their turf) the rich nations promise them some royalties. Amount unspecified.
What the two sides want is very different. In all the drafts so far, what the globalists have offered has not moved much if at all. They have played hardball. How much are they prepared to give up at the last minute? There are no indications yet of last-minute generosity.
The Geneva Health Files substack today indicates that the WHO’s Secretariat and Bureau are jumping in to the negotiations to create new procedures to try and reach agreement. As I have said before, this is evidence that the “member-led process” claimed by Tedros is a sham, as the procedures are shaped and reshaped by bureaucrats in order to achieve the aims of the WHO’s biggest funders.
Geneva Health Files also has some interesting things to say about the country negotiators vs their ambassadors and health ministers. Priti Patnaik, the author, seems to think that consensus can be achieved if the negotiators can hold back the senior officials from their governments. Presumably this means that the negotiators are tired (or bribed) and are ready to give in to the big boys on some issues, and if they can just be allowed to manage the treaty discussions in isolation, without obeying messages from home, agreement can be reached. Hmmmm to that.
We have already seen the Russian negotiator Smolenskiy working against his nation’s interests and the Italian negotiator (who someone claimed was Ethiopian) claiming support for the treaty and amendments when the Italian government was not in favor. Does this imply that the globalists have captured other negotiators — so that separating them from those providing instructions from the home country is what is being attempted?
Will the global south give in to the globalist agenda for a measly few pieces of silver, accepting all the risks the WHO documents will subject them too? Meanwhile, the global north prints money like crazy, and could in fact offer considerably more at the last minute.
But is any amount worth the risk of entering into an era of pandemics, rolling out dangerous vaccines and giving the WHO authority over vast swathes of the planet?
I must ask again: for whom is the WHO’s agenda good? Who benefits? Only those seeking a one world government.
Bird Flu Outbreaks & the WHO/IHR Pandemic Treaty Push
By Barbara Loe Fisher | The Vaccine Reaction | April 22, 2024
Even as U.S. health agencies and the United Nations World Health Organization (WHO) are being heavily criticized for their botched response to the COVID-19 pandemic,1 2 3 WHO officials are ramping up pressure on all nations to sign a WHO pandemic treaty and amendments to the WHO’s International Health Regulations (IHR), which will give them more authority to track, quarantine, force vaccine use and censor free speech during WHO declared pandemics.4 5 The WHO’s Director General has been blaming opposition to the UN agency’s epic power grab on “a torrent of fake news, lies and conspiracy theories.”6
On Apr. 19, 2024, the United Nations sent out a press release declaring that the “ongoing global spread of ‘bird flu’ infections to mammals including humans is a significant public health concern,” pointing to an outbreak of H5N1 viral infections in dairy cows in the U.S. and warning that the virus could evolve and cause human-to-human transmission with “extremely high” mortality.7 The implication was that a potentially deadly global bird flu pandemic was a clear possibility.
The CDC website describes symptoms of H5N1 bird flu infections, and they sound very similar to seasonal influenza or SARS-CoV-2 infections associated with COVID-19 disease:
“The reported signs and symptoms of bird flu virus infections in humans have ranged from no symptoms or mild illness [such as eye redness (conjunctivitis) or mild flu-like upper respiratory symptoms], to severe (such as pneumonia requiring hospitalization) and included fever (temperature of 100ºF [37.8ºC] or greater) or feeling feverish*, cough, sore throat, runny or stuff nose, muscle or body aches, headaches, fatigue, and shortness of breath or difficulty breathing. Less common signs and symptoms include diarrhea, nausea, vomiting, or seizures.”8
Warnings That Egg and Milk Supplies May Be Contaminated with Bird Flu Virus
Mainstream media have been joining the UN in characterizing bird flu outbreaks in cattle as a significant public health concern, with news outlets breathlessly reporting that cattle were infecting each other with H5N1 and some experts questioning whether raw or even pasteurized milk containing high levels of the avian virus is safe.9 Although H5N1 bird flu was first detected in 1996, since 2020 there have been more outbreaks in poultry farms, wild bird and land and marine animals.10 11 Americans were warned in early April that the eggs from chickens potentially infected with the avian virus should be well cooked,12 and then the media reported that a U.S. dairy farm worker in Texas had been infected with bird flu.13
The same day the UN issued their press release, Agence France Presse again reminded readers that a person working on a dairy farm in Texas was recovering from bird flu. A WHO official was quoted as stating that, “The case in Texas is the first case of a human infected by an avian influenza by a cow.”14
U.S. Plan to Drive the Global “Health Security” Agenda If WHO Treaties Fail
Three days earlier, on Apr. 16, the White House announced a five-year “Strategy to Strengthen Global Health Security” plan citing the COVID-19 pandemic as the need to put the U.S. in the driver’s seat via bi-lateral financial investment partnerships with 50 to 100 countries to “drive global action toward shared goals” and “mitigate the impact of health security threats” in order “to prevent, detect and contain them at their source.”15 The new plan “articulates a whole-of-government science-based approach to strengthening global health security.”
The current U.S. administration is in favor of the WHO pandemic treaty and IHR amendments proposed by the world’s largest public health agency.16 However, the WHO is getting pushback from lawmakers and citizens in the U.S. and in other nations, who do not want to go along with the UN/WHO power grab that many critics say threatens human rights and national sovereignty.17 18 19 A respected Japanese scientist posted a video message to the world online,20 and there was a massive demonstration In Japan this month against the WHO pandemic treaty.21
The U.S. “Global Health Security” plan would ensure that if the WHO treaties fail to be signed by enough countries to become international law, the U.S. will make sure there is a global “rapid response to global health emergencies.” According to the U.S. plan, the core of that “rapid response” are “efforts to transform international financial institutions, such as the World Bank, and to accelerate “manufacture, procurement and delivery” of medical countermeasures like vaccines.22
Even though there is Increasing public opposition to the WHO’s plan to expand its legal authority to tell eight billion people what to do whenever WHO officials declare a “public health emergency” – which includes eliminating freedom of speech and electronically monitoring everyone’s vaccination status and requiring people to carry a digital “vaccine passport” in order to travel or enter public spaces23 – it looks like the U.S. government is going to get the job done whether the WHO manages to get enough countries to sign the WHO/IHR treaties or not. The lucrative public-private business partnerships that have been expanded over the past four decades between the WHO, pharmaceutical corporations, governments and other institutions is paying big dividends for the Public Health Empire.24
Bird Flu Vaccines Being Developed and Stockpiled
Is the latest well-publicized specter of a deadly global bird flu pandemic, which is so reminiscent of the well-publicized specter of a deadly coronavirus pandemic in early 2020,25 a harbinger of things to come or just a coincidence?
Whatever it is, the preparations for delivery and approval of H5N1 “vaccines,” which includes mRNA bird flu shots, is well underway.
On Apr. 20, Barrons reported that the U.S. government “says it could distribute enough [bird flu] vaccines within four months to inoculate a fifth of the U.S. population” (68 million people) if the H5N1 strain infecting cattle began to spread among humans.26 Healthcare workers, law enforcement and other first responders, military personnel pregnant women, infants and high risk children would get the shots first.
Apparently, two clinical trials of bird flu vaccine have been underway since last year and CSL Sequiris and GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) are under contract to test the vaccines targeting a strain of avian influenza closely related to the H5N1 strain currently infecting U.S. dairy cows. Another major manufacturer of influenza vaccine, Sanofi, would also likely be involved in bird flu vaccine production.
H5N1 Vaccine Production Could Be Ramped Up to Vaccinate the Entire U.S. Population
An FDA spokesperson reportedly told Barrons that the approval process to quickly distribute a new H5N1 bird flu vaccine for Americans would be similar to the accelerated process used to create annual flu vaccines. A spokesperson for Administration for Strategic Preparedness & Response (ASPR) also commented that, if needed, the agency would work with bird flu vaccine manufacturers “to ramp up production to make enough vaccine doses to vaccinate the entire [U.S.] population.”
Oil in Water Adjuvants in Vaccines and Autoimmunity
Both Sequirus and GSK have developed “oil in water” emulsion adjuvants added to influenza vaccines, including bird flu vaccines, to stimulate hyper-inflammatory responses in the body that generate high levels of antigen-specific antibodies in an effort to make the vaccines more “effective.” Squalene adjuvants have been associated with development of autoimmune disorders.27 28 29
GSK’s AS03 adjuvant contains a-tocopherol, squalene and polysorbate 80,30 and some European children and adults, who got GSK’s AS03 adjuvanted H1N1 “swine flu” vaccine in 2009, developed cases of narcolepsy, a neurological autoimmune disorder.31 The Sequiris influenza vaccine contains MF59,32 the first squalene oil in water emulsion adjuvant added to influenza vaccines in the 1990s.33 According to the Apr. 20 Barrons’ report, large quantities of both of these squalene adjuvants are stored in the U.S. government’s special pandemic influenza vaccine stockpile, which was created in 2005, along with premade influenza antigens.
A 2023 article published by Chinese researchers the medical literature promoted the “remarkable success” of mRNA coronavirus vaccines and the need to use three types of specific adjuvants to make mRNA vaccines more effective: (1) RNA with self-adjuvant characteristics; (2) components of the delivery system [such as lipid nanoparticles]; and exogenous immunostimulants (such as squalene).34
As with squalene adjuvants, the lipid nanoparticles, which envelop and deliver synthetic RNA in COVID shots to body cells to produce the SARS-CoV-2 spike protein, are highly inflammatory to stimulate a strong immune response, but also have been associated with allergy and autoimmunity.35
Europe Already Has Approved Two H5N1 Bird Flu Vaccines
Earlier this year, the European Medicines Agency (EMA) approved two H5N1 avian flu vaccines made by Sequiris, although neither one are mRNA products. Medscape reported on Feb.23, 2023 that Celldemic had been approved for use in infants six months of age and older if public health officials anticipate a bird flu pandemic, and Incellipan had been approved for use when a bird flu pandemic has been declared.36
mRNA Bird Flu Vaccines A Quick Way to Produce Bird Flu Vaccines
A year ago, Scientific American reported that “vaccine makers are preparing for bird flu,” with one pediatric infectious disease doctor quipping “It’s a really dangerous time to be a bird.” Another expert warned “None of us know when the next influenza pandemic will emerge… At the outset, you have to say there is uncertainty, with one exception: there will be a pandemic.”37 In that article, the reliance on U.S. stockpiled egg-based flu vaccines to produce an H5N1 vaccine was called into question and mRNA technology to produce bird flu vaccine was highlighted because it offers “speed of production” so an mRNA vaccine targeting a new influenza strain can be created in a matter of weeks.
Also in 2023, there was a report in the medical literature that University of Pennsylvania researchers had created an H5N1 mRNA lipid nanoparticle vaccine being tested on mice and ferrets.38 In March 2024, Chinese researchers announced they had created a 10-valent mRNA nanoparticle vaccine encoding proteins from four seasonal influenza viruses, two avian flu viruses with pandemic potential, and spike proteins from four SARS-CoV-2 variants. They said two doses of FLUCOV-10 “elicited robust immune responses in mice” against all 10 vaccine-matched viruses.39
Only Time Will Tell
Amendments to the WHO’s International Health Regulations (IHR) will be voted on at the end of May. Only time will tell whether the latest publicity warning the public about a potentially imminent bird flu outbreak in humans is real or just another bit of propaganda being used to create fear and put pressure on governments to give up sovereignty for the illusion of safety.
1 Bell D. Pandemic preparedness and the road to international fascism. The American Journal of Economics and Sociology July 30, 2023.
2 Nuccio D. Public health agencies must be reined in before next pandemic. Washington Examiner Mar. 29, 2024.
3 Schaefer B, Groves S. The WHO Pandemic Treaty Fails Again. The Heritage Foundation Apr. 19, 2024.
4 Fisher BL. Stop the World Health Organization Power Grab To Mandate Vaccines & Censor Free Speech. National Vaccine Information Center Apr. 11, 2024.
5 Door to Freedom. WHO International Health Regulations Compendium. April 2024.
6 AFP in Geneva. Global pandemic agreement in danger of falling apart,WHO warns. The Guardian Jan. 22, 2024.
7 United Nations. Pandemic experts express concern over avian influenza spread to humans. UN Press Release Apr. 18, 2024.
8 U.S. Centers for Disease Control & Prevention (CDC). Bird Flu Virus Infections in Humans. Apr. 11, 2024.
9 Branswell H. USDA faulted for disclosing scant information about outbreaks of H5N1 avian flu in cattle. STAT News Apr. 18, 2024.
10 Parpia R. Bird Flu Outbreak in Oregon Leads to Mass Euthanization of Poultry. The Vaccine Reaction Feb. 5, 2024.
11 Singler E. H5N1 influenza: From avian to bovine to feline and beyond. AAHA Apr. 19, 2024.
12 Camero K. Is it safe to eat runny eggs amid the bird flu outbreak? Here’s what the experts say. USA Today Apr. 4, 2024.
13 Hendler C. Texas Man and Dairy Cattle Test Positive for Bird Flu. The Vaccine Reaction Apr. 16, 2024.
14 Agence France Presse. H5N1 Strain of Bird Flu Found in Milk: WHO. The Barron’s Daily Apr. 19, 2024.
15 White House. Fact Sheet: Biden-Harris Administration Releases Strategy to Strengthen Global Health Security. Apr. 16, 2024.
16 Staver M. Biden’s Amendments Hand U.S. Sovereignty to the WHO. Liberty Counsel 2023.
17 Human Rights Watch. Draft “Pandemic Treaty” Fails to Protect Rights. Apr. 17, 2024.
18 Webster A. WHO pandemic amendments threaten national sovereignty. Mail Guardian Apr. 17, 2024.
19 NTD. U.S. Representatives speak on “Surrender of U.S. Sovereignty to WHO.” Press Conference Apr. 18. 2024.
20 Professor Massayasu Inoue, MD, PhD video message to the world on harms of mRNA COVID “genetic” vaccine and the WHO pandemic treaty threat to freedom and human rights. NVIC Rumble Channel Apr. 10, 2024.
21 The Gateway Pundit. Massive protests break out in Japan in Opposition to WHO’s proposed pandemic treaty. Apr. 13, 2024. Twitter video of protest in Japan.
22 White House. Fact Sheet: Biden-Harris Administration Releases Strategy to Strengthen Global Health Security. Apr. 16, 2024.
23 Fisher BL. G20 Leaders Pledge to Require Global “Digital Health Certificate” Vaccine Passport. The Vaccine Reaction Nov. 22, 2022.
24 Fisher BL. WHO, Pharma, Gates & Government: Who’s Calling the Shots? National Vaccine Information Center Jan. 27, 2019.
25 Fisher BL. Coronavirus Vaccines on Fast Track as WHO Declares Global Public Health Emergency. National Vaccine Information Center Feb. 5, 2020.
26 Kazis JN. U.S. Could Vaccinate a Fifth of Americans in a Bird Flu Emergency. Barron’s Apr. 20, 2024.
27 Autoimmune Technologies. Gulf War Syndrome: Anti-Squalene Antibodies Link Gulf War Syndrome to Anthrax Vaccine.
28 Kuroda Y, Nacionales DC et al. Autoimmunity induced by adjuvant hydrocarbon oil components of vaccine.Biomed Pharmacother 2004; 58(5): 325-327.
29 Guimaraes LE, Baker B, Perricone C, Shoenfeld Y. Vaccines, adjuvants and autoimmunity. Pharmacological Research 2015; 100: 190-209.
30 Garcon N, Vaughn DW, Didierlaurent AM. Development and evaluation of AS03, an Adjuvant System containing a-tocopherol and squalene in an oil-in-water emulsion. Expert Rev Vaccines 2012; 11(3): 349-366.
31 Miller E, Andrews N et al. Risk of narcolepsy in children and young people receiving AS03 adjuvanted pandemic A/H1N1 2009 influenza vaccine: retrospective analysis. BMJ 2013; 346.
32 Patel SS, Bizjajeva S, Heijnen E, Oberye J. MF59-adjuvanted seasonal trivalent inactivated influenza vaccine: Safety and immunenicity in young children at risk of influenza complications. Int J Infect Dis 2019; 85 (Suppl): S18-S25.
33 Black S. Safety and effectiveness of MF-59 adjuvanted influenza vaccines in children and adults. Vaccine 2015; 33 (Suppl 2): B3-B5.
34 RxLisXie C, Yao R, Xia X. The advances of adjuvants in mRNA vaccines. Npj Vaccines 2023; 8:162.
35 Lee Y, Jeong M, Park J et al. Immunogenicity of lipid nanoparticles and its impact on the efficacy of mRNA vaccines and therapeutics. Exp Mol Med 2023; 55: 2085-2096.
36 Agarwal D. Europe Greenlights Two Avian Flu Vaccines. Medscape Feb. 23, 2024
37 Docter-Loeb H. Vaccine Makers Are Preparing for Bird Flu. Scientific American Mar. 2, 2023.
38 Furey C, Ye N, Kercher L et al. Development of a nucleoside-modified mRNA vaccine against clade 2.3.4.4b H5 highly pathogenic avian influenza virus. bioRxiv Apr. 30, 2023.
39 Wang XC, Ma Q, Li M et al. A 10-valent composite mRNA vaccine against both influenza and COVID-19. bioRxiv Mar. 5, 2024.
The WHO and Pandemic Response – Should Evidence Matter?
REPPARE | BROWNSTONE INSTITUTE | APRIL 22, 2024
The Basics of Policy Development
All public health interventions have costs and benefits, and normally these are carefully weighed based on evidence from previous interventions, supplemented by expert opinion where such evidence is limited. Such careful appraisal is particularly important where the negative effects of interventions include human rights restrictions and long-term consequences through impoverishment.
Responses to pandemics are an obvious example. The world has just emerged from the Covid-19 event, which should have provided an excellent example, as broad new restrictive interventions were widely imposed on populations, while some countries offer good comparators by avoiding most of these restrictions.
The WHO calls such measures Public Health and Social Measures (PHSM), also using the largely synonymous term non-pharmaceutical interventions (NPI). Even if we assume that countries will continue to enjoy full sovereignty over their national policies, WHO recommendations matter, if only because of epistemic authority or shaping of expectations. In 2021, the WHO established a PHSM Working Group which is currently developing a research agenda on the effects of PHSM. As part of this remit, it is expected that the WHO will re-examine their recommendations on PHSM rigorously to reflect the lessons from Covid-19. This process is envisaged to be completed by 2030.
It is therefore curious that the WHO, without providing any comparison of cost and benefit from Covid-19, concluded a 2023 meeting with public health stakeholders from 21 countries with a call to action on all countries “to position PHSM as an essential countermeasure alongside vaccines and therapeutics for epidemic and pandemic preparedness and response.” With Member States due to vote in late May to make WHO recommendations within the International Health Regulations (IHR) effectively binding, “undertaking to follow the Director General’s recommendations before they are given, one would expect these recommendations would be based on a thorough and transparent review that justifies their imposition.”
IHR Benchmarks
In 2019, the WHO defined ‘benchmarks for International Health Regulations (IHR) capacities,’ which did not include PHSM. Although the IHR are still being revised, the benchmarks have been updated in 2024 as ‘benchmarks for strengthening health emergency capacities.’ The update includes new benchmarks on PHSM, which are stated by the WHO to “play an immediate and critical role throughout the different stages of health emergencies and contribute to decreasing the burden on health systems so that essential health services can continue and effective vaccines and therapeutics can be developed and deployed with their effects maximized to protect the health of communities.”
In the new document, PHSM are said to “range from surveillance, contact tracing, mask wearing and physical distancing to social measures, such as restricting mass gatherings and modifying school and business openings and closures.” A new benchmark on PHSM has been included. For example, to meet the level of “demonstrated capacity,” States are now expected to “review and adjust PHSM policies and implementation based on timely and regular assessment of data” and to “establish whole-of-government mechanisms with well-defined governance and mandates to implement relevant PHSM.”
However, the document also acknowledges that PHSM can have “unintended negative consequences on the health and well-being of individuals, societies and economies, such as by increasing loneliness, food insecurity, the risk of domestic violence and reducing household income and productivity” [i.e. increase poverty]. Accordingly, another new benchmark has been introduced: “The protection of livelihoods, business continuity and continuity of education and learning systems is in place and functional during health emergencies.” Disruptions particularly to schooling now seem to be expected during health emergencies as reflected in benchmarks involving “policies for alternative modalities to deliver school meals and other school-linked and school-based social protection when schools are closed due to emergencies.” While potentially being rooted in an acknowledgement of the harms of the Covid-19 response, this benchmark also illustrates the extent to which the Covid-19 event now shapes the idea of what a pandemic response looks like. No other pandemic or health emergency was ever addressed through similarly prolonged disruptions to the economy or to education.
Furthermore, benchmarks on border control measures now expect States to “develop or update legislation (relevant to screening, quarantine, testing, contact tracing, etc.) to enable the implementation of international travel related measures.” To meet the “demonstrated capacity” benchmark, States must “establish isolation units to isolate and quarantine suspected human or animal cases of communicable diseases.”
Due Research
These new benchmarks illustrate a remarkable departure from WHO’s pre-Covid guidelines. The most detailed such recommendations were laid out in a 2019 document based on a systematic review of non-pharmaceutical interventions for pandemic influenza. Despite SARS-CoV-2 spreading similarly to influenza, these guidelines have been widely ignored since 2020. For example, the 2019 document stated that border closures, or quarantining healthy contact persons or travellers were “not recommended in any circumstances.” The isolation of patients was recommended to be voluntary noting that workplace closures of even 7-10 days may disproportionately harm low-income people.
Prior to 2020, most discussed PHSM now proposed by the WHO had never been implemented at large scale and data on their effects was accordingly scarce. For example, the 2019 review recommended wearing masks when symptomatic and in contact to others, and even “conditionally recommended” wearing masks when asymptomatic during severe pandemics purely based on “mechanistic plausibility.” Indeed, two meta-analyses of randomized controlled trials (RCTs) of face masks published in 2020 found no significant reduction in influenza transmission or influenza-like illness.
Today, we have an abundance of evidence on the effects of PHSM during the Covid era. Yet, there could hardly be more disagreement regarding efficacy. A Royal Society report concluded that lockdowns and mask mandates decreased transmission and their stringency was correlated with their effectiveness. Meanwhile, a meta-analysis estimated the average lockdown in Europe and North America to have reduced Covid mortality by merely three percent in the short term (at high cost) and an updated Cochrane Review still found no evidence for the effectiveness of masks in community settings (let alone mask mandates) in RCTs. The lower level of restrictions in Nordic countries was associated with some of the lowest excess all-cause mortality in the world between 2020 and 2022, including Sweden which never resorted to general lockdowns or mask mandates.
New Recommendations
Notwithstanding the variable evidence of effectiveness and harm, and the ongoing 7-year WHO review process, the WHO has begun to revise recommendations on PHSM. The first publication of the WHO’s newly launched initiative Preparedness and Resilience for Emerging Threats (PRET), titled ‘Planning for respiratory pathogen pandemics,’ advocates for a “precautionary approach to infection prevention early in the event” that “will save lives” and tells policy makers to “be ready to apply stringent PHSM, but for a limited time period in order to minimize associated unintended health, livelihood and other socio-economic consequences.” These recommendations are not founded on any systematic review of new evidence, as was attempted in the 2019 influenza guidance, but largely on unstructured, opinion-based “lessons learned” compilations of committees convened by the WHO.
The 2023 version of the WHO’s ‘Managing Epidemics’ handbook, first published in 2018 and intended to inform WHO country staff and health ministries, illustrates this lack of evidence-base. Comparing both editions of the same document shows a marked normalization of Covid-19-era PHSM. For instance, the earlier version recommended sick people wear masks during severe pandemics as an “extreme measure.” The revised handbook now recommends masking everyone, sick or healthy, not merely during severe pandemics but even for seasonal influenza. Covering of faces is clearly no longer considered an “extreme measure” but normalized and portrayed as similar to hand washing.
Elsewhere, the 2018 version of ‘Managing Epidemics’ stated:
We have also seen that many traditional containment measures are no longer efficient. They should therefore be re-examined in the light of people’s expectations of more freedom, including freedom of movement. Measures such as quarantine, for example, once regarded as a matter of fact, would be unacceptable to many populations today.
The 2023 edition revises this to:
We have also seen that many traditional containment measures are challenging to put in place and sustain. Measures such as quarantine can be at odds with people’s expectations of more freedom, including freedom of movement. Digital technologies for contact tracing became common in response to Covid-19. These, however, come with privacy, security and ethical concerns. Containment measures should be re-examined in partnership with the communities they impact.
The WHO no longer considers quarantine inefficient and unacceptable, but merely “challenging to put in place and sustain” because it can be at odds with people’s expectations.
A new section on “infodemics” gives advice on how to manage people’s expectations. States are now encouraged to set up an “infodemic management team” that shall “debunk misinformation and disinformation that could have a negative health impact on people and communities, while respecting their freedom of expression.” Again, evidence is not provided as to why this new area of recommendations are needed, how ‘truth’ is arbitrated in such complex and heterogeneous situations, or how potential negative effects of stifling exchange of information and discussion of complex issues will be addressed.
Infodemic Management in Practice
Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, the WHO’s Director-General recently reassured the world in a speech:
Let me be clear: WHO did not impose anything on anyone during the Covid-19 pandemic. Not lockdowns, not mask mandates, not vaccine mandates. We don’t have the power to do that, we don’t want it, and we’re not trying to get it. Our job is to support governments with evidence-based guidance, advice and, when needed, supplies, to help them protect their people.
This is not the only example of the WHO adopting a proactive strategy of “infodemic management” as it recommends States to do. The latest draft of the Pandemic Agreement includes a new paragraph:
Nothing in the WHO Pandemic Agreement shall be interpreted as providing the Secretariat of the World Health Organization, including the WHO Director-General, any authority to direct, order, alter or otherwise prescribe the domestic laws or policies of any Party, or to mandate or otherwise impose any requirements that Parties take specific actions, such as ban or accept travellers, impose vaccination mandates or therapeutic or diagnostic measures, or implement lockdowns.
The latter claim is particularly noteworthy because it ignores the proposed IHR amendments accompanying the pandemic agreement, through which countries will undertake to follow future recommendations on PHSM within a legally binding agreement, while the Pandemic Agreement does not include any such propositions.
The WHO promises to ‘support governments with evidence-based guidance’ but appears to be promoting PHSM recommendations that conflict with their own guidance without any apparent new evidence base. Given that countries did well without following highly restrictive measures, and the long-term impacts of reduced education and economic health on human health, the principle of “do no harm” would seem to demand more caution in applying such consequential policies. Policies need an evidence base to justify their adoption. Given the trajectory of natural outbreaks, contrary to WHO claims, is not increasing, it seems pertinent to expect one from the WHO before they push Member States to risk the health and economic well-being of their populations next time a pandemic or health emergency is declared.
REPPARE (REevaluating the Pandemic Preparedness And REsponse agenda) involves a multidisciplinary team convened by the University of Leeds.

