Panel 3 - WHO and the public perception - discussion

Changes to the IHR and the new Pandemic Treaty - risks.
The 77th WHO World Health Assembly met in Geneva from May 27 to June 1, 2024, preceded by more than a year and a half of negotiations on two separate instruments of international law: amendments to the International Health Regulations (IHR 2005) and a new agreement on pandemics - the Pandemic Treaty. The assembly failed to reach agreement on the treaty - it was decided that negotiations for its adoption would be completed within a year. A few hours before the end of the meeting, the delegates, violating internal WHO rules, adopted amendments to the International Health Regulations (2005). The amendments, prepared behind closed doors, were submitted to the World Health Assembly for consideration and approval literally in the final moments of the meeting with blatant disregard for established protocol and procedures. The provisions of Article 55(2) of the IHR, which requires that any planned changes and amendments to the International Health Regulations be made available to member states “at least four months” prior to their consideration at the WHO World Assembly, were completely ignored. The Director General declined to hold a formal vote to adopt a legally binding international agreement, announcing that there was a “consensus” on the issue.
The amendments adopted are significantly reduced from the more than 300 originally planned, including many controversial ones, such as seeking to remove provisions on “respect for the dignity, human rights and fundamental freedoms of human beings,” the introduction of provisions changing WHO's role from an advisory organization that merely makes non-binding recommendations, to one whose provisions will be legally binding on member states, or requiring pharmaceutical companies to be able to develop vaccines for threats in 100 days, allowing for a “voluntary vaccination scenario using products that are still in the research phase or subject to very limited availability.”
The amendments that member states have adopted will facilitate the global expansion of the vast industrial complex of pharmaceutical hospitals being set up to support the distribution of “essential medical products.” There are fears that their real purpose will be to create continued “pandemic emergencies” that will be made worse by the use of “essential health products.” The amendments significantly increase WHO's financial position, focusing on consolidating funding sources to implement provisions that strengthen countries' ability to respond to pandemic crises. This includes ensuring access to so-called “essentialhealth products” that are needed to respond to public health emergencies of international concern, such as pandemics. These products may include “medicines, vaccines, diagnostics, medical devices, vector control products (anything that can transmit disease, such as mosquitoes or other insects), personal protective equipment, decontamination products, support products, antidotes, cell and gene therapies, and other health technologies.” Funding mechanisms will not only be sourced and distributed by national authorities, but will also include redistribution of funds from developed countries to developing countries through the WHO. One of the amendments provides for a mechanism that, with the consent of a state party to the IHR, would include “mobilization of financial resources to assist developing countries in building, strengthening and maintaining core capacities” to respond to and prevent pandemics. This means that richer countries would help fund the emerging pandemic preparedness complex in developing countries, under the supervision of the WHO.
The adopted amendments to the IHR should be interpreted inextricably from the Pandemic Treaty, whose adoption is merely postponed. The Pandemic Treaty is an attempt to introduce a new international trade agreement that gives the WHO a monopoly on the collection of new pathogens, collected by member states and transferred free of charge to WHO laboratories, whose head will decide their pandemic potential. The treaty, together with the IHR, creates a model of inevitably recurring “pandemic emergencies”: public money will inject funds and create financial mechanisms to search for pathogens and their variants for transfer to WHO laboratories, allowing for the declaration of pandemic emergencies, the imposition of risk-related restrictions (lockdowns, mask orders, etc. ) and recommending mandatory mass vaccinations with preparations prepared by pharmaceutical companies for 100 days, and 20% of the production of vaccines and other medical products would be placed at the exclusive disposal of the WHO until a new pathogen is found and the cycle is repeated. This arrangement will provide huge profits for Big Pharma corporations and investors, a state of perpetual emergency will give extraordinary powers to governments, who will willingly deprive us of further civil rights and liberties, for the greater good of all.
The definition of a pandemic emergency is structured in an incredibly fluid way , giving the Director General the ability to declare it at will, without strict criteria - Article 12 specifies that it is the head of the WHO who decides whether an event constitutes a public health emergency of international concern, without any opportunity to question that decision, without regulations to challenge it. Everything is in the hands of this one person: “A 'pandemic emergency' means a public health emergency of international concern that is caused by an infectious disease and is spreading, or has a high risk of spreading, to multiple countries; exceeds, or has a high risk of exceeding, the capacity of health systems to respond in those countries; causes, or has a high risk of causing, significant social and/or economic disruption, including disruption of international traffic and trade; and requires rapid, equitable and enhanced coordinated international action, with a government-wide and society-wide approach." How many patients are high risk? The document lacks any specifics on the number of people who must be hospitalized, the numbers of identified cases of illness or death to be considered a risk. Everything is decided arbitrarily, single-handedly by the head of the WHO, which raises suspicions that the definition of a pandemic emergency was created only to instill fear in people and then manage that fear.
The adopted amendments reinforce the WHO's monopoly on only legitimate public health information by eliminating dissenting voices from the public space, and deepen legitimate concerns about the institutional imposition of political and scientific censorship - the WHO is supposed to decide what is allowed to be talked about and what is disinformation. The adopted amendments include a clause that opens the door to state-supported censorship: “At the national level (...) each State Party shall develop, strengthen and maintain (...) basic capacities for (...) risk communication, including countering disinformation and false information".
The requirement that states address “disinformation” provides ample room for abuse. Neither term is defined in the document. Does “dealing with” mean censoring and possibly punishing those who presented dissenting views? During the Covid-19 pandemic, doctors and scientists who disagreed with the WHO narrative were censored for their views. Those who proposed treatment protocols not recommended by the WHO were threatened with suspension of their license to practice medicine. Now censorship will be introduced as a requirement of the International Health Regulations, which will surely be used to justify actions taken against those who oppose the official WHO health narrative, such as requiring social media to remove their content. Exactly as the risk of “misinformation” was used to justify systemic censorship of dissenting voices during the Covid pandemic. The “surveillance” requirement does not specify what is to be subject to surveillance. Articles 4 and 5 of the latest version of the draft treaty on continuous pandemic surveillance and the One Health concept , give a pretext for public health surveillance on the grounds that environmental, climatic, social, anthropogenic (i.e., human-induced climate change) and economic factors increase the risk of a pandemic. WHO will therefore seek to identify these factors and take them into account in the development and implementation of relevant policies. Through the “One Health” approach, WHO has usurped the authority and right to monitor all aspects of life on earth.
Analyzing the amendments introduced and the draft of the new pandemic treaty, the following scenario appears to be a reality: A pharmaceutical company, a sponsor of the World Health Organization, has developed an mRNA vaccine for a new variant of the extremely dangerous monkeypox or influenza virus. The WHO declares an epidemic and then a pandemic, promoting the vaccination program as the only possible way out of the crisis. Fast-track regulatory procedures allow instant authorization of the preparation by drug approval agencies, and the Digital Health Certificate helps promote the vaccination campaign: unvaccinated people - even though, of course, vaccination is voluntary - cannot enter stores, bars and restaurants, have trouble finding jobs and cannot travel. Thanks to such global “marketing”, vaccine sales go into the billions, the Pharmaceutical Company is satisfied with the satisfaction of its investors, repaying the WHO with generous donations.
What might this look like in practice? WHO's current chief scientist is Sir Jeremy Farrar, who has been in office since 2023. Previously, Mr. Farrar was a director of The Wellcome Trust from 2013 to 2023. The Wellcome Trust, along with the Gates Foundation, were key partners in founding the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovation (CEPI), an initiative to accelerate the development of vaccines for infectious diseases, prepare the response to the COVID-19 pandemic, and advance preparedness for future pandemics. The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation is WHO's largest donor, with more than 88 percent of the total amount donated to WHO by philanthropic foundations coming from the Gateses. Other donors, the Bloomberg Family Foundation, the Wellcome Trust and the Rockefeller Foundation together contribute about 6 percent. In April 2024, the World Health Organization expressed concern about the spread of the H5N1 bird flu virus, which has an “extremely high” human mortality rate.
Jeremy Farrar believes this is a huge cause for concern that a variant of the influenza A (H5N1) virus will become a “global zoonotic pandemic.” “The big worry, of course, is that by infecting ducks and chickens, and then more and more mammals, the virus evolves and develops the ability to infect humans, and then the ability to pass from human to human”. Admittedly, Farrar says, so far there is no evidence that H5N1 spreads between humans, but in the hundreds of cases in which people have been infected through contact with animals over the past 20 years, “the mortality rate is extremely high”, because humans have no natural immunity to the virus.
According to the WHO, for 21 years, from 2003 to 2024, there were only 889 cases of infection with the virus worldwide and 463 deaths caused by H5N1 in 23 countries, giving a mortality rate of 52%. Most of the cases are incidents from 2003-2009 recorded in third world countries. In the U.S., two cases of infection and not a single death were reported during that time.
An International Summit on Avian Influenza was held in early October 2024, bringing together representatives from various sectors, including the pharmaceutical industry, politicians, industry interest groups and NGOs. The summit, like previous meetings such as Event 201, focused on preparing for potential avian flu health crises. Topics discussed included mass mortality management, surveillance and data management, public preparedness strategies, vaccine and antiviral supplies, medical measures, and socioeconomic impacts on the poultry and livestock industries. Earlier, in July 2024, the Secretary of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services declared avian influenza a state of emergency under the PREP Act: “I hereby determine that there is a significant potential for a public health emergency with type A virus with pandemic potential, justifying authorization for the emergency use of in vitro diagnostics to detect avian influenza type A (H7N9) virus.” The FDA has licensed three avian influenza (H5N1) vaccines: Sanofi, Biomedical and Seqirus licensed based on studies whose trials were conducted on very small groups of volunteers, with a large number of adverse events occurring. The declaration of a state of emergency allows for the use of a rapid emergency authorization pathway. On July 29, the WHO website says: “A new project to accelerate the development and availability of mRNA-based human avian influenza (H5N1) vaccines targeting manufacturers in low- and middle-income countries has been launched today. Argentine manufacturer Sinergium Biotech will lead the effort, leveraging the World Health Organization's (WHO) mRNA Technology Transfer Program and Medicines Patent Pool (MPP).”