GOP Sen. Rick Scott of Florida is taking steps to ensure the World Health Organization cannot gain enough power to dictate policies to the U.S. government in the event of a global health pandemic.
Scott introduced a bill that would clarify that public health matters are squarely in the jurisdiction of the U.S., not the WHO, according to Fox News.
According to Scott’s website, the bill would “prevent any U.S. official from treating as binding any directive or order issued from the World Health Assembly, the WHO, or its agents or branches.”
It would also “require America’s representatives to the WHO to oppose any changes to the WHO charter unless both Houses of Congress vote to adopt the change in a joint resolution.”
Scott was presumably reacting to the online hubbub concerning the latest World Health Assembly meeting. The WHA is the decision-making body of the WHO’s 194 member states. It is holding its first fully in-person event in two years, The Washington Post reported.
The kerfuffle has been fueled by discussions of a forthcoming “pandemic treaty.” The potential treaty could it thought to contain direction about regulating how countries prepare for and respond to future pandemics. Though such a treaty will not be agreed upon at the assembly, the backlash has already spread beyond the realm of global health.
Mainstream U.S. politicians such as Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida have responded to the threat if such a treaty existed. A Rubio tweet makes his position clear. A ‘Pandemic Treaty’ cannot hand over American public health decisions to “the corrupt” WHO.
We must never allow Biden to use a “Pandemic Treaty” to give control over American public health decisions to the corrupt @WHO
— Marco Rubio (@marcorubio) May 21, 2022
According to the Post, former GOP Congresswoman Michele Bachmann claimed the Biden administration drafted amendments to global health law that suggested “all nations of the Earth cede their sovereignty over their national health-care decisions to the WHO.”
Fact-checkers such as Snopes assert that Bachmann’s claims are false. But even if Rubio and Bachmann are in fact merely paranoid about government overreach, who can blame them? Government mask mandates and lockdowns during the COVID pandemic should have everybody worried about governmental overreach.
Imagine Dr. Anthony Fauci, head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases and the chief medical advisor to the president during the pandemic, with even more power to dictate lockdowns and mask mandates. Even if the WHO doesn’t have the authority to enforce its public health decisions, people like Fauci might.
Who wouldn’t be worried?
To further stoke the general unease, powerful people have said some crazy things using the pandemic as a springboard.
Take, for example, Yuval Noah Harari, an agenda contributor to the international lobbying organization World Economic Forum. The WEF has close ties to WHO. There is a page dedicated to the WHO on the WEF website and it is mentioned favorably numerous times on the site as a whole.
Harari is also a top advisor to Klaus Schwab, the founder and frontman of the WEF.
In an article published by the Financial Times, Harari wrote, “In order to stop the epidemic, entire populations need to comply with certain guidelines. There are two main ways of achieving this. One method is for the government to monitor people, and punish those who break the rules. Today, for the first time in human history, technology makes it possible to monitor everyone all the time.”
“Today, for the first time in human history technology makes it possible to monitor everyone all the time,” Harari continued. “Fifty years ago, the KGB couldn’t follow 240m Soviet citizens 24 hours a day. But now governments can rely on ubiquitous sensors and powerful algorithms instead of flesh-and-blood spooks.”
With talk like that from one of the contributors to a powerful lobbying organization like the WEF, the mere mention of a “pandemic treaty” naturally makes all kinds of people nervous, including me.
Though there is no actual “pandemic treaty” currently in existence, politicians like Scott are taking precautions to ensure that there never is.
“The United States of America must never give more power to the WHO,” Scott told Fox News. “The WHO is a puppet for Xi Jinping, controlled by the Chinese Communist Party, and helped Beijing cover up the origins of COVID-19.”
“We must quickly pass this bill to ensure that public health matters in the country remain in the hands of Americans,” Scott said.
It’s a good idea, even if it is a bit paranoid. Like the man said, paranoia is only logical if everyone’s out to get you.
If some high-ranking politicians are a bit paranoid about a WHO global power grab, that doesn’t invalidate vigilance against global power grabs.
Better safe than sorry.
