The World Health Organization (WHO) is responding to a string of monkeypox outbreaks, and will be convening an emergency meeting on the virus and its global spread. In terms of government power, the timing of this outbreak couldn’t be better for the WHO—which may soon be granted the powers to manage laws on global health outbreaks, and which is oddly well-positioned for a monkeypox outbreak following a recent “germ-games” call, and recent incidents tied to figures including Microsoft billionaire Bill Gates.
The New York Post declared, “The World Health Organization is reportedly convening an emergency meeting into the alarming spread of monkeypox around the world—including a possible case in the Big Apple.” The Telegraph reports that the United Nations health authority will be bringing together “a group of leading experts” in the meeting, which is believed to be focused on how the virus is suddenly spreading so widely. It will also allegedly look into the virus’s prevalence among homosexual men and on the “vaccination situation.”
Numbers of infections are by no means high. By May 23, the University of Oxford and Harvard Medical School recorded 245 cases either confirmed or suspected in the entire world. Sajid Javid, a member of the UK Parliament, wrote on Twitter: “Most cases are mild …”
The timing of all of this is important. It gives the WHO a chance to show its worth as it’s in the process of trying to get new and expansive powers—under the banner of governing global health emergencies.
The United Nations is considering various amendments to the WHO at its 75th World Health Assembly in Geneva, Switzerland, that could give its Director-General, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, the unilateral authority to declare a public health emergency with far-reaching powers over the laws of sovereign nations.
Not only would this give Tedros the ability to declare a public health emergency in any nation he wants—using whatever evidence he wants—but it would also allow him to dictate policies that the target country should adopt to respond to the U.N.’s declared emergency. If a country refuses, a proposed amendment could give the WHO the ability to sanction that country.
If you’re wondering whether giving such powers to a U.N. agency, which couldn’t demonstrate its independence from the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), could fly in the face of U.S. law, it seems that President Joe Biden has the answer. Not only is the Biden administration allowing this shift in power to the WHO, but it’s also helping advance it.
The United States proposed amendments to the WHO in January, which will now be considered at the U.N. meeting in Geneva, The Epoch Times reports. These included an amendment that would allow the WHO to make public declarations on a health crisis without needing to consult with the target country, and without needing to get verification from local officials. The Biden administration’s proposals would also give $2.47 billion in funding to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) for things including “enhancements to domestic sentinel surveillance programs,” “investments in global genomic surveillance approaches,” and other systems.
As The Epoch Times reports, “Respiratory surveillance platforms include video cameras and recorders that alert authorities when members of the public are seen coughing or otherwise acting in a manner that could indicate the presence of an infectious disease or help spread one already present in a population. Such equipment is widely used in China.”
Whether or not monkeypox poses a large threat to public health, it presents a serious threat to public freedom. The virus could act as a trojan horse, carrying inside it all the justifications to grant the WHO a dictator’s dream of global power, and give the CDC a system of surveillance beyond anything Orwell could have conceived.
