Alexis Copland
New international health regulation amendments are being introduced. The proposal will weaken the link between policy and evidence, further normalising the exclusion of qualified critics.
Humans get their resilience from the wide range of responses to problems.
Sweden, which did not follow WHO (World Health Organisation) recommendations during the pandemic, performed extraordinarily well in all but the first wave. Indicators I’ve seen show Sweden will outperform us in changes to child mental health and literacy over the pandemic, general post-pandemic health, the economy, and incurred debt over the pandemic.
Even the most pessimistic excess mortality data shows Sweden did better than most of wealthy Europe, and, according to WHO numbers, no worse than NZ overall. The mortality that did occur was overwhelmingly in those older than the average life expectancy.
New Zealand’s response, conversely, disproportionately affected the young.
Our two countries present two successful responses.
Locking ourselves into a single global pandemic policy poses a huge reduction in our ability to learn, and mistakes could be catastrophic. The global authority will have new powers to override our government, and most importantly, its documents will be beyond the reach of our Official Information Act. The proposed amendments must at least acknowledge the accelerating prevalence of misleading or false research. They don’t.
The following examples set dangerous precedents:
1. No body conducted research strong enough to support common masking policies. This, surprisingly, left us with a body of evidence showing masking was no better than Ivermectin. My gut instinct says masking will help, but that is not the point.
2. The original Pfizer vaccine trial was the only place to collect the transmission data needed to support mandate policy. No extra effort would have been required. Pfizer itself ended up spending millions on direct lobbying to push vaccine uptake and mandates. This is an obvious breakdown in regulation and oversight.
3. In the largest breach of trust, Pfizer was allowed to remove its control group after just two months and only 170 total infections. This is despite the truly novel technology (mRNA/LNP) having had next-to-no relevant human trials prior to 2020. A control group is a basic prerequisite of proving a new technology is safe and effective. As a result, we now have excess mortality that cannot be pinned to either the virus, nor vaccine, nor aftermath of lockdowns. There is research showing each, but all of it flawed.
4. Hundreds of millions was spent trialling Ivermectin, yet the 45 trials failed to test the protocol recommended by the drug’s advocates. It is simple, and even a Merck document confirms the drug must be taken with a meal in order for it to enter the blood. Consult experts. Do the trial. Publish the results. Release the data. I see problems on all four counts. I’m not saying it works, but wouldn’t it be nice to know? To curb dissent and provide meaningful data, the WHO needs to pay attention to these debates.
Privately funded interest groups currently hold more sway over WHO policy than member nations, and only 17 percent of the WHO budget comes from national membership subs. This and other examples illustrate a conflicted organisation no longer able to advocate for its sub-paying nations. The philosophy of the most influential donors is very clear. The market knows best. In fact, the largest private contributor actively blocked vaccine manufacture during the pandemic.
My confronting observations have been made from studying well-defined bodies of evidence.
If we get the regulation and global policies right we will be in a much stronger position going forward. Many books and published papers confirm that the pharma industry publishes a huge amount of misleading research; this is not new. It seems obvious that centralisation of power creates a very effective lobbying target. Lobbying is real.
We need a well resourced lobby that is shielded from corporate interests and free to openly criticise cherry-picked evidence.
Even if the instinct of policy makers is correct, and masking does work, Ivermectin has no viral benefit, and Pfizer is not incentivised to cherry-pick the data it presents, the new global regulation should have widely agreed standards on what constitutes robust evidence. It must have teeth to ensure relevant information is being reported on. As our advocate, it must be subject to transparency laws.
The WHO’s campaign against misinformation should have been accompanied by a huge effort to fill the data vacuum that caused it. I suspect we will end up relinquishing power to the WHO without any real regulation being extended to where it is really needed, and that this relinquishing of sovereignty will not in fact be scrutinised before Parliament. Please prove me wrong Chris Hipkins.