The 77th session of the World Health Assembly (WHA) just concluded at the World Health Organization’s (WHO) headquarters in Geneva, Switzerland. It originally intended to adopt a new pandemic treaty and amendments to the 2005 International Health Regulations (IHR) that would tie country responses to the decisions of WHO’s Director-General. In the end, it kicked one can down the road for a year, and partly filled another. The mandate of the Intergovernmental Negotiating Body (INB) was extended to continue negotiation on the wording of the new treaty (‘Pandemic Agreement’), and the Assembly adopted a limited package of binding and non-binding amendments to the IHR. This outcome, reached during the very last hours, is disappointing from many viewpoints, yet was not unexpected.
Both texts were pushed in unusual haste by those who advised, supported and mandated catastrophic public health responses to Covid-19. Ignoring Covid’s probable lab-based origins, the official narrative backing the measures remains that “the world is unprepared for the next pandemic”. Spending over $30 billion per year on surveillance and other measures aimed solely at natural outbreaks will somehow fix this.
Hellbound and Down 