The WHO pandemic treaty: Déjà vu all over again
[Editor's note: This story originally was published by Real Clear Wire.]
By Martin Hoyt
Real Clear Wire
The treaty codifies worst practices as dictated by unaccountable elites.
One would be hard-pressed to find many Americans today who look back at the pandemic with fondness or admiration for the way in which our government – including our public health officials – responded to the COVID-19 pandemic. The mistakes made were legion, the cost mind-blowing, and the misconduct even worse. Indeed, Anthony Fauci, the very face of the pandemic for most Americans, seems to have embodied a contempt for integrity in government. His record-keeping practices and aversion to congressional and public oversight were the epitome of bureaucratic arrogance.
This sad history makes it even more shocking that many high-ranking U.S. officials in the Biden administration are trying to subject Americans to the same failed protocols in the event another pandemic is declared. Yes, they would impose the policies that have been debunked, protested, and rejected time and again by the mass public – closed schools, endless lockdowns, prohibitions on outside exercise without face masks, one-size-fits-all vaccine mandates, and on and on.
All these policies could be on the table again if the World Health Organization (WHO) Pandemic Treaty finds its way into U.S. law. As a quick reminder, the WHO was the organization that sent EcoHealth Alliance co-founder Peter Daszak to investigate whether COVID had a natural origin or leaked out of a lab in Wuhan, China. In March 2021, the WHO report concluded that COVID likely did not come from a lab accident, an answer welcomed by public health officials and media outlets and quickly used to shut down debate over the issue. Months later it would be revealed that Peter Daszak and EcoHealth had strong financial conflicts and a direct connection to gain-of-function research being conducted at the Wuhan Institute of Virology. Several U.S. government agencies have since released top secret reports revealing that early on they believed it was more likely than not that the virus originated in a Chinese lab. This is hardly a record on which the WHO, or U.S. public health officials, can build trust.
While the latest developments suggest the WHO Pandemic Treaty may not survive in its current form, the public should be very concerned.
The WHO Pandemic Treaty was withdrawn from ratification last week. The decision to withdraw was primarily due to the strong resistance to the treaty in Great Britain and the clear reality that there was insufficient support in the U.S. Senate – a testament to the American public’s intolerance of the globalist agenda. However, the WHO remains intent on finding another pathway. Media outlets have reported that the WHO will seek to insert many of the key structural concepts in the treaty in amendments to the International Health Regulations (IHR) of 2005, currently under consideration. The U.S. is a party to the IHR and legally required to meet certain enumerated obligations.
The treaty provisions under consideration for the IHR raise several federalism, civil liberty, and constitutional concerns. National sovereignty would be infringed upon, as U.S. officials would take direction from an unaccountable body that will advance the terms of the treaty, making it likely that the treaty is a living document and not the final word. Controversial social, labor, and environmental policies appear embedded throughout – perhaps in an effort to entice the Biden administration that its unpopular domestic goals could find safe harbor. Patent protections for companies that helped protect and innovate our way out of the pandemic would be dramatically weakened and subject to the whims of member states who have made clear their intent to take a free ride.
Of course, no document seeking to institutionalize the failed COVID pandemic protocols would be complete without concerted censorship efforts. While a pending case before the United States Supreme Court is set to address the constitutionality of senior government officials’ reliance on policies to “fight mis- and disinformation” during the pandemic, the desire to censor opposing viewpoints continues. It should be anticipated that, left to their own devices, international public health officials will feel no allegiance to such antiquated concepts as freedom of speech or freedom of association protected by the U.S. Constitution.
As many in the media ponder aloud with the government’s top public health officials why public trust in their institutions have plummeted so severely and how they can regain that trust, it may be worth looking no further than ongoing efforts like the WHO Pandemic Treaty. Let us hope reform comes to the public health bureaucracy before the government’s favorite pandemic policies return to “save the day.”
Martin Hoyt is the Director for Public Health Reform Alliance, a nonpartisan organization committed to increasing transparency and oversight on the public health system so it works better for all Americans.
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