A story of global bureaucratic incompetence.
by John Klar
The WHO (World Health Organization) took center stage during the COVID pandemic as the global coordinator of effective response. Questions about the organization’s proper role – and competence – preceded and now survive the COVID-19 crisis. Was the WHO effective and apolitical in its response, and can it be trusted with its global medical preeminence?
Though bathed in a patina of trust, health agencies have long proven that they can fall victim to the human frailties of error, bureaucratic lethargy, political bias, and hubris. Post-COVID-19, many national interests are pushing to expand the WHO’s authority and funding even more, viewing its faulty responses to the pandemic as justification to allocate more money to shore up those failures. Others take a contrary view, asserting that the organization’s shortcomings during COVID-19 demonstrate intractable problems with no global solution.
Who Is the WHO?
The WHO has fared very well post-pandemic, increasing its gross revenue by some $300 million in 2022 to $4,354,000,000 (including $739,000,000 from the United States). As more questions about the COVID virus response are raised, including Wuhan lab origins and potential adverse effects of vaccines, the global jury is still out as to whether the WHO was rescuer or bumbler. Concerns about competence preceded the pandemic. A 2016 article noted:
“Public health specialists, non-governmental organisations and some of the WHO’s biggest donors say the organisation is unwieldy, poor at coordinating responses to epidemics, and too thinly spread. And increasingly it struggles to set its own priorities because many of its donors give it money earmarked for specific projects.
“Some experts inside and outside the organisation say those flaws mean the WHO’s lead role in global health is now at risk.”
Many stakeholders have tried to parlay the COVID-19 debacle into an even more significant future power base for the WHO. The organization is pushing to expand its powers, funding, and global oversight of member nations under the pretense of being better positioned to respond more effectively to future pandemics. Questions about virus origins, gain-of-function research, lab safety, vaccine efficacy, and the appropriateness of quarantining healthy people (and children) have caused many legislators and citizens to pause.
Indeed, the House Select Committee on the Coronavirus Pandemic held a December 13 hearing titled “Reforming the WHO: Ensuring Global Health Security and Accountability.” Americans must ask: Is the federal government seeking to press the WHO on its competence, or politically rejuvenate it using faux hearings to bolster its legitimacy?
A key question is whether the WHO can ever be indeed “independent” from the winds of national politics. History suggests not, including during the recent experience of COVID-19. The WHO presents itself as an objective medical team that “… encourages the strengthening and expansion of the public health administrations of member nations ….” But that airy-fairy ideal ignores the realities on the political ground.
Myanmar, Syria, and the WHO
While Myanmar oppressed minority ethnic groups, the WHO worked with its central government, “exacerbating existing political tensions.” In Syria, Brown’s Political Review wrote, the WHO’s well-intentioned efforts aggravated that nation’s civil war:
“WHO’s failings in Syria are not strictly in the public health sphere, as its cooperation with the Syrian government played an indirect role in shaping the Syrian Civil War. The Syrian government has pursued a military strategy that targets the health of rebels …If WHO were more willing to work with Syrian rebel groups to achieve positive health outcomes, it would avoid playing into Assad’s military strategy.”
The Wuhan WHO?
Similar concerns were raised when the Wuhan virus began its spread. In an article titled “How China Deceived the WHO,” The Atlantic observed:
“… when the pandemic now consuming the world was still gathering force, a Berkeley research scientist named Xiao Qiang was monitoring China’s official statements about a new coronavirus then spreading through Wuhan and noticed something disturbing. Statements made by the World Health Organization, the international body that advises the world on handling health crises, often echoed China’s messages. “Particularly at the beginning, it was shocking when I again and again saw WHO’s [director-general], when he spoke to the press … almost directly quoting what I read on the Chinese government’s statements,” he told me.”
Gaza Strip and Abortion
The evidence the WHO is not independent of political pressures can be seen in its recent proclamations about Gaza. Recounting a litany of health crises in the Gaza Strip, the organization does not address civilian casualties in Israel while engaging in political statesmanship:
“[The WHO] calls on Member States, donors and international humanitarian and development actors to provide humanitarian assistance to the Palestinian people, and to ensure the allocation of human and financial resources in order to urgently achieve these objectives.”
The humanitarian crisis in Gaza is enormous, but is inextricable from the (unmentioned by the WHO) attacks on Israeli citizens. The organization’s pronouncements make that conflict appear one-sided and implicate Israel in Geneva Convention violations. Did the WHO rally resources for Russian civilians as well as Ukrainians?
The WHO also endorses abortion, transgenderism, “equity,” sex education, and questions whether age of consent laws should be adjusted to permit minors to consent to sex despite existing protections. This mission creep now extends to every facet of human life: Human “health” touches everything, and so the WHO has expanded its purview far beyond what was contemplated at its formation in 1948. More voices are calling for restraints on the powers of this organization, even as global efforts are underway to use the failings of the COVID-19 response to grant it even more power over sovereign nations.
The author is a Brookfield best-selling author, lawyer, farmer and pastor.
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Categories: Commentary, Health Care
“The organization is pushing to expand its powers, funding, and global oversight of member nations under the pretense of being better positioned to respond more effectively to future pandemics.” But would they given their performance during the COVID pandemic? Personally I don’t trust the United Nation, or any of their money extorting, power grabbing, entities. They have proven themselves to be anti American, autonomy grabbing commies. We (the United States) should kick them out of that beautiful building in N.Y.C. and turn it into housing for homeless veterans.
Who trusts the WHO? I’ll tell you who. Becca Balint does.
When I emailed her regarding my concerns about ratifying the WHO pandemic treaty she wrote back that the WHO is a wonderful organization with a long history of beneficial acts etc. etc. Too bad I trashed the email or I’d share it here. It was so patronizing I felt it wasn’t worthy of a response. If she doesn’t get the argument, greater debaters than I am will have to convince her.
I had a similar response from Ms. Balint. It was condescending and rather than wanting to engage in discussion, she began her opening with: ” I am sorry we do not see eye to eye on this issue”. In other words, she is not interested in investigating for herself what the WHO stands for and what the WHO really wants. She is most likely bought and paid for fool who only wants to advance her own career and will toe the globalist/marxist cabal’s diktats to climb up a ladder that they will then remove from under her feet when they are done with her.
Look how prominent the serpent is in the WHO emblem, same for the AMA (American Medical Association). That’s the clue and is symbolic of all the evil they do in concocting “medicines”, herbicides, pesticides, water fluoridation etc. The Apostle Paul warned of and condemned the “pharmakos”. In Paul’s day the pharmakos were “those who practiced magical arts” such as sorcery, dark arts, and witchcraft and often sold various drugs and potions. Pharmakos became the English word pharmacist. Today’s pharmaceutical system and their priesthood of doctors, industry sales reps, and lobbyists, are indeed dispensing their poisons to us and into our food supply. A modern, internationally state-sanctioned system of evil concoctions. So, naturally the serpent is a fitting emblem for the pharmaceutical and medical establishments.
Exactly! So grateful to those courageous enough to point out the spiritual warfare playing out behind the scenes. Keep shining the light, brother!
“Daniel”, the serpent has been associated with healing since 800 years before Christ was born. You are mistaken in your representation and comment about the purpose of the snake. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6913859/
I do not disagree with you about the vile and heinous activities of the WHO and until recently I would vehemently support the use of The Staff of Aesculapius (one snake) or the caduceus (two snakes on winged staff) by medical professionals. Since the “pandemic” I no longer support the health care community and have left my 40-year career, 7 years short of official retirement, in protest of the incomprehensible and unethical stance they have taken since 2020.
I also do not disagree with you about today’s pharmaceutical business. But I must continue to oppose your rhetoric regarding the “evil serpent” if you will allow my paraphrasing. I also oppose your lumping all medical establishments and pharmaceutical companies together. There are still many who understand the time-honored profession and our oath and attempt to be the pillars of our community that we had been for many years. I could not do it. I don’t possess the ability to keep my mouth shut and it cost me.
Respectfully,
Pam Baker
I am sorry for your disillusionment with the medical field. I can understand that sentiment. Of course, there are good people doing their best in that system, but it does not change the fact of the matter. Did the industry turn during Covid? Or, was it always on the trajectory? Things that come to mind are lobotomies—physical in the past, and chemical-type today with drugging even children with long-term or life-long, sham psychiatric drugs, Tuskegee experiments, water fluoridation (which is forced medication with an industrial waste product), electro-shock therapy, new persistent herbicides like aminopyralids and atrazine, transgender surgery and drugs, and on and on.
I am familiar with the theory of the medical emblems having origins in Greek mythology and I read that article you linked, noting especially how it states the origins are murky. But with certainty, we know that the serpent does in fact represent human suffering by its fall into sin as told in the beginning of the Old Testament, written by Moses around 3500 years ago. We see that the fall of man from the Garden of Eden occurred through the deceiving snake. The snake was Satan: the ultimate anti-Christ. This Biblical truth in the Old Testament predates the Greek mythology that the serpent somehow is a sign of healing. In addition, at the very end of the New Testament, in the Book of Revelation, we again see that the serpent is Satan: “The great dragon was hurled down—that ancient serpent called the devil, or Satan, who leads the whole world astray. He was hurled to the earth, and his angels with him.” Simply put, the medical community puts the mark of the beast, Satan, on all of its professional symbols. It has rooted itself in Satanism. And the medical leaders certainly led and still lead much of the world astray, just like it says the serpent, Satan, did in that Book of Revelation passage. The only true source of healing is Jesus Christ, not systems devised by man with the mark of demonic insignias or false gods and black magic from Greek, pagan mythology.
George Washington warned us of Foreign Entanglements…. This looks like one to me. We were warned and many did not listen, now look at what is going on. How many wars? How many dead?
Beautifully expressed, as always. Final paragraph “mission creep” could also be expressed as “creepy mission.”