Dr Will Jones: Covid Vaccines Saved Far Fewer Lives Than Claimed by WHO, Major New Study Finds

Covid vaccines saved far fewer lives than first thought, a major new analysis from Stanford’s Professor John Ioannidis and team has concluded – closer to 2.5 million than the 14 million claimed by the WHO in 2022. The Telegraph has more.

DTNZ: Argentina withdraws from WHO

President Javier Milei has accused the global health agency of mismanaging the Covid-19 pandemic.

Argentina has announced its withdrawal from the World Health Organization (WHO), citing fundamental policy disagreements, particularly during the Covid-19 pandemic. The move mirrors a decision made last month by US President Donald Trump.

Lushington Brady: Pauline Kicks the Rat’s Nest Again

Calls for Australia to quit the WHO.

Good old Pauline – she never fails to put a rocket up the b*****rds.

This time, in a move sure to set the chattering classes shrieking and clutching for their pearls, she’s urging Australia to follow US President Donald Trump’s lead and ditch the venal WHO.

Francesca Rudkin: How did loneliness become a global epidemic?

This week, the World Health Organisation launched a new Commission on Social Connection. It may sound like an online dating group; it’s not. The Commission aims over the next three years to focus on ways to address the ‘pressing health threat’ posed by a global epidemic of loneliness.

Loneliness is considered a health issue because it has serious impacts on our mental and physical health. Research shows it can increase the risk of heart disease, arthritis, type-2 diabetes, and can increase the risk of premature death and accelerate cognitive decline.

David Bell: How Did the Corruption of Public Health Happen?

International public health is a mess. Once seen generally as a public good, the focus of the World Health Organization (WHO) now more closely resembles a scheme for extracting private profit from the public purse. Wealthy corporations drive a ‘public-private partnership’ agenda, the foundations of the rich determine global priorities, and a propagandized public are ever more removed from decision-making regarding their own well-being.

David Redman: The People Must Say No to Failed COVID-19 Strategies

The Wall Street Journal recently published an article by John Tierney (see Fauci and Walensky Double Down on Failed Covid Response, August 18, 2022) on the failed response to COVID-19 in the United States and in most western democracies.

The article was totally in keeping with what many have been saying for the past 2 1/2 years. That the response to COVID-19 was unprecedented, not in keeping with all the hard documented lessons learned from previous pandemics. In addition, it was both dangerous and deadly.

Clive Bibby: Cost benefit analysis of lockdowns

 

My research during this pandemic has usually led me to be sceptical about recommendations offered to the world by heads of the different UN departments - especially WHO. 

The reason for my scepticism is not unlike my distrust of other UN agencies who are charged with oversight of the world’s problems. 

Matt Ridley: A WHO pandemic pact would leave us at China’s mercy

Lessons have still not been learned, so why should we trust the WHO in a future pandemic?

My article for Telegraph - first published May 14, 2022:

On 22 May, the World Health Organisation meets for the World Health Assembly, an annual summit to which all the world’s countries are invited – except Taiwan, which is excluded at China’s behest. On the agenda is a “pandemic accord” that would greatly expand the WHO’s powers to intervene in a country in the event of a future outbreak.

The European Union, true to form, pushed for a legally binding pandemic “treaty” instead, but that won’t happen for two reasons: the American Senate would need a two-thirds majority to ratify it; and the Chinese government would not allow even its pet international agency to tell it what to do. But the accord would still have substantial force of international law behind it, to make governments impose domestic lockdowns, for example – despite the WHO’s own figures showing little correlation between lockdown severity and death rates.

Matt Ridley: WHO Appeasement of China Makes Another Pandemic More Likely

The WHO has now wasted a year failing to investigate properly the origins of Covid-19 - first published 15 March, 2021 in The Telegraph HERE. 

It is a year ago last week since the World Health Organisation conceded, belatedly, that a pandemic was under way. The organisation’s decisions in early 2020 were undoubtedly influenced by the Chinese government. 

On 14 January, to widespread surprise, the WHO was still echoing China’s assurance that there was no evidence of person-to-person spread: “it is very clear right now that we have no sustained human-to-human transmission,” said an official that day. Within days even China conceded this was wrong.

Matt Ridley: WHO must answer serious questions before it is trusted with leading a Covid-19 inquiry

When the pandemic passes, which it will, there will be a reckoning to determine who could have stopped it early and did not. Dominic Raab, the foreign secretary, has suggested that it would have to be carried out by the World Health Organisation: "Obviously, after the crisis has abated I think the time will be right to conduct a kind of 'lessons learned' [inquiry] and I'm sure the World Health Organisation will be at the forefront of that.”

This is a terrible idea. WHO is full of good people with good intentions, but as a body it has very serious questions to answer about its own conduct before we trust it with looking at that of others.

Matt Ridley from the UK: FIFA and other unaccountable international fiefdoms

The Fifa fiasco is not just about football. It is also emblematic of a chronic problem with international bureaucracies of all kinds. The tendency of supranational quangos to become the personal fiefdoms of their presidents or directors-general, and to sink into lethargy or corruption, followed by brazen defiance when challenged, is not unique to Fifa or sport. It is an all too common pattern.

Fifa is an extreme example mainly because of the enormous opportunity for bribery involved in granting the right to host a vastly lucrative tournament every four years. A similar corruption scandal befell the International Olympic Committee in 1998 over its practices when awarding the Winter Games to Salt Lake City, while under the 21-year presidency of Juan Antonio Samaranch. Reform followed.

Matt Ridley from the UK: The World Health Organisation attacks vaping instead of Ebola

Is there a connection between ebola and e-cigarettes?I don’t mean to imply that vaping has caused the epidemic in west Africa. But the World Health Organisation (WHO) now has serious questions to answer about its months of complacency over ebola. WHO’s director-general, Margaret Chan, made a speech only two weeks ago implying that tobacco control and the fight against e-cigarettes is a more important issue.

On October 13 Dr Chan gave her apologies for not being able to attend a conference on ebola and made a speech instead at a WHO summit in Moscow on tobacco. This is what she said there: “Some people speculated that I would not attend this meeting because I am so busy with so many other outbreaks of communicable diseases [ebola was third on her list, after flu and Mers coronavirus].No. No. No. I will not cancel my attendance at this meeting because it is too important . . . Tobacco control unquestionably is our biggest, surest and best opportunity to save some millions of lives . . .The next challenge is that the tobacco industry is increasing its dominance over the market for electronic cigarettes.”