Monkeypox is being pushed in the media. The World Health Organization is negotiating a pandemic deal that could affect nearly every country in the world, including the United States This is the world we live in now (on acceptable, according to many experts and the scientific technocratic priesthood) as it continues to be reshaped by Big Covid.
The prospect of a pandemic deal should provoke a reaction from all concerned to salvage what is left of the democracies we once thought we inhabited, but there is an incredible level of ambivalence about the negotiations, both among the mainstream -Media and the public. Conveniently for the WHO now meeting in Geneva, there is a lot to distract us – Ukraine for example; In addition, many ordinary people are busy thinking about it how to afford to fuel their cars, or buy the usual amount of groceries to feed their families, or pay their mortgages without going under.
This deal would essentially empower the WHO to declare pandemics whenever it wants and push for the very same restrictions that have been endured for the last two years: lockdown of select countries (regardless of whether parts of the population have been affected by the economic fallout impoverished), stopping air travel, introducing revaccination. Given that the jury is very much out on the effectiveness of such measures versus their damage in this latest round – many argue they were an unqualified disaster – it’s confusing to see that all the cautionary tales are again not are taken into account.
“As more studies and real-world evidence emerge about the damage caused by lockdowns and the hasty global rollout of a new type of vaccine, politicians seem oblivious,” writes Alex Klaushofer a recent Substack essay. “The rush to draft a new global deal on pandemic management, without allowing time for reflection or evaluation of the experimental approach that has prevailed since early 2020, shows that governments have failed to learn the lessons of the past two years.”
According to Klaushofer, there are clear conflicts of interest at the heart of the contract. It would require more WHO staff and offices around the world to monitor outbreaks – read: more global surveillance. Increased capacity makes sense, but those jobs and salaries would depend on seeing them doing something. Hence Klaushofer’s concern that the treaty will “leave behind a global pandemic industry with up to 10,000 professionals in bodies funded by governments, corporations and other organizations who need to demonstrate results.”
Which, of course, is right down the alley from Big Pharma. We’ve just seen how a pandemic can lead to calls for multiple novel vaccines that will make the industry fortunes. In addition, Bill Gates heads the organization that provides the second-largest contributor to WHO funding. There is a lot of money in all of this.
We hear no resistance to such entanglements from public health professionals because the same professionals are undermined by the same conflicts of interest. They’re part of a “highly dependent workforce,” notes Klaushofer, in which salaries and the ability to provide for families, health care and pensions depend on the outside organizations that provide funds approving what the experts say and do. It’s the same kind of “institutional capture” that has basically corrupted most of the global healthcare industry, at least in terms of the ability to speak openly and honestly, if you look at the last two years.
At the same time, much of the general population seems trapped by a psychological form of institutional confinement: Covid revealed what an amazing level of conformance and conformance is out there these days. The complex reasons for this have yet to be fully unpacked. One theory calls it “mass education” and explains it as a reaction to a sense of insignificance, fear, and general anxiety that pervades modern societies.
Whatever the reasons, even governments were surprised by the level of compliance and resulting compliance: So we can actually do that, shut down entire societies, regardless of the horrible consequences, tell everyone to dehumanize themselves – especially little disgusting children – through wear masks and not touching their loved ones or having sex, and people join in…. Huh, didn’t think it was that easy.
and she didn’t help – I’m talking about you, America, the apparent bastion of representative democracy. She remains “the leading light in the struggle for freedom” in the Words by Sherelle Jacobs, a UK columnist Daily Telegraph recently touring the U.S. South, a country “pulsing with a visceral love of freedom and a raw belief in the thriving of the individual,” the world has watched since 2016 a particularly unpleasant “intellectual struggle raging in America over the meaning of… Freedom itself rages.”
This involves, Jacobs argues, “an important shift from a ‘negative’ view of freedom, which emphasizes individual freedom from outside interference, to a more ‘positive’ view, aiming at a higher state of collective enlightenment.” But that’s it Kind of “positive” freedom we’ve witnessed over the past two years, in which freedom took the form of a “socio-economic outcome brought about by a benevolent state,” while “bureaucratic elites are given unprecedented power” and “what a appalling levels of government surveillance and control.”
As Alexander Zubatov describes in his recent TAC essay: “The LGBTsQewing of America’, the complex interplay of the environment, changing social mores and societal patterns contribute to how each of us sees, reacts and behaves in the world. And the US has provided the world with some particularly un-American examples of the classic definition of liberty on which it has hitherto been accepted as a basis.
As dealing with a global pandemic clearly requires cooperation and coordination, is the Pandemic Agreement really such a risk? As Klaushofer notes, analyzing the real risks isn’t easy, as coverage of the treaty ranges from news reports “making the deal sound painless and technical” to “crying about an imminent global coup d’état by the World Economic Forum.” ” At the moment, she says, legal experts disagree on the status of what could be agreed; Most of the terms of the treaty appear to be non-binding, and the good people behind them recognize “national sovereignty” as a limitation on treaty effectiveness, while any treaty takes time to negotiate and ratify.
But the critical underlying point remains. As Michael Senger, lawyer and author of Snake Oil: How Xi Jinping Stopped the World, put it: “Its passage is a ratification and approval of everything the world has experienced during the past two years during Covid-19. By signing the Pandemic Treaty, our leaders are signaling their commitment that all of this – and more – should be done all over again.”
James Jeffrey is a freelance journalist and writer, dividing his time between the US, UK and beyond, writing for various international media outlets. Follow him on Twitter: @jrfjeffrey and on his website: www.jamesjeffreyjournalism.com.
