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A Massive Power Grab in the Form of a Pandemic Treaty

The World Health Organization (WHO) is creating a treaty on “pandemic prevention, preparedness, and response.” The working draft advocates for a “whole-of-government and whole of society” approach with provisions for “robust surveillance,” suppressing speech they consider to be “disinformation,” and creating a global right to government-funded health care which wealthy nations must finance to create “equity” with poor nations. This constitutes a massive power grab from the institution which bungled the COVID-19 pandemic and schilled for the Chinese Communist Party. Without any accountability for previous misdeeds the WHO wants more money and more power to do more of the same. 

According to the US constitution, treaties hold equal weight with the constitution. So this would become the global default setting as well as the supreme law of the United States. 

Today, Friday September 9, the WHO announced that the promised public hearings would be virtual, starting immediately, and open for three days only. Video submissions will be compiled by the WHO secretariat, “taking into account the need to ensure propriety, appropriateness and decorum.” They claim that video submissions will be “randomly selected” but also that, “care will be taken to ensure gender balance and equitable geographical representation.” In other words, the WHO is giving themselves a loophole to exclude opinions they find inappropriate. 

We encourage as many people as possible to submit video comments before Friday (16 Sep, 2022) at 2:00 pm EST. We must not give excuses for them to exclude a more balanced point of view, so please be respectful, and emphasize issues with broad support, such as respect for human rights, consideration for a wholistic definition of health, and transparency. And, please also upload your submission here, so if the WHO does exclude dissenting voices, we will make our own compilation to distribute to WHO member-states. 

Steps

  1. Record a <90 second video answering the question “Based on your experience with the COVID-19 pandemic, what do you believe should be addressed at the international level to better protect against future pandemics?” Possible talking points include
    • Preventing human rights violations that occurred in the last pandemic, like restrictions on religious freedom, free speech, and freedom of association.
    • Increasing transparency and accountability, like making WHO meetings public, requiring pharmaceutical companies to release clinical trials before releasing the vaccine, and disclosing relationships between pharmaceutical companies, governments, and scientists
    • Weighing the relative impact of a virus against other impacts like economic, social, and educational. Remind them that the WHO’s own constitution says, “Health is a state of complete physical, mental and social well-being and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity.”
  2. Submit your video to the WHO  at https://inb.who.int/home/public-hearings/second-round
  3. Submit to us to keep them honest Click the button below to submit videos to us. If they do not include your statement on the website, we will distribute it to WHO member-states.
  4. Consider sharing your statement on your social media accounts with the hashtag #pandemictreaty. The more eyeballs on this process the better!

Tips for an effective statement

  • Be civil and avoid accusations. Anger will get you deleted, and a 90 second video won’t convince the WHO that they’re bad at their job. But a compelling argument could shift their priorities.
  • Be proactive. This is about preventing the next pandemic, not rehashing the last one. So for example, talking about the origins of COVID-19 will get you ignored, but asserting that a lab leak is possible and therefore gain of function research should be banned is on point.
  • Use agreed language. Frame your experience from the perspective of human rights, whole-health (physical, mental, and social well-being), and transparency. For example, “Remote learning may have prevented my daughter from getting COVID-19 for a while, but the cost to her mental health has been extreme.” 
  • The more personal, the more impactful. Instead of “There needs to be informed consent for vaccines,” try “I lost my baby because nobody told me that the vaccine causes miscarriages.”

Let your voice be heard

After you have submitted your video to the WHO, submit it to us and we’ll make sure to keep them honest!

Submit your Video