Deadly pandemics are rare, so why is the WHO obsessed with them?

Caryn Lipson

May 31, 2024

The proposed pandemic agreement will set humanity into a new era that is strangely organised around pandemics: pre-pandemic, pandemic and inter-pandemic times.

Andrew Bridgen, Member U.K. Parliament

A world revolving around pandemics?

The WHO’s Pandemic Treaty is currently on life support but has not yet expired. WHO director-general Tedros Ghebreyesus said that he remains confident that the parties will yet reach a consensus though health officials believe it will take years, as reported by US News.

As Andrew Bridgen stated in the above quote, the treaty and accompanying international health regulation (IHR) amendments would force the world to revolve around pandemics in one way or another. The entire treaty focuses on everything related to pathogens of pandemic potential — from searching for them to researching them, developing vaccines and therapies and their manufacture, and mandating medical treatments, lockdowns, and other countermeasures.

The director general of the WHO would have unilateral power to declare an epidemic of international concern whenever he decided, without the need for any discussion with member states. Countries would not only have to abide by his decision under international law, but the money to fund these required activities would come from the countries themselves, predominantly the more well-off Western countries.

However, some question the need for such a treaty — they contest the WHO’s claim of a future filled with pandemics.

Testing creates pandemics

Dr. David Bell shared information in a meeting of the British parliament’s group on pandemic response and recovery which, he said, belies the WHO’s figures attesting to the increasing risk of zoonotic disease spread from animals to humans. U.K. Parliamentarian Philip Davies recounted Dr. Bell's briefing on the treaty and the accompanying amendments to the international health regulations (IHR).

According to Dr. Bell, “significant natural pandemics are rare events” when you factor in population growth, but new technologies enable the WHO to make frequent claims of pandemics in modern times.

There has been a huge expansion of tests and genome sequencing over the last few decades. The invention of polymerase chain reaction testing, for example, has had a massive impact on the detection rate of those outbreaks that the World Health Organisation is now using to justify its agenda.

Not new but newly identified

Michael Clark, a specialist in the political economy of international relations, made a similar point in his article published by the Brownstone Institute. He stated that new pathogens are not new but newly identified or characterized, now that we have the technology to do so. Furthermore, they are not very contagious and therefore have very low mortality.

The identification of apparently new, emergent virus outbreaks is an artifact resulting from the recent advances in the technology of pathogen testing and identification – PCR, antigen, serology, and digital sequencing – and the growing reach and sophistication of public health systems worldwide. Most pathogens in the WHO global mapping of viruses should not be described as new or emergent, but newly identified or characterized. Most are also either low virulence or low transmissibility resulting in very low mortality.

Noticing them does not change the risk

Dr. Bell also concurs that we are not seeing and will not see an increase in natural pandemics. He refers to a study by the University of Leeds showing that an increase in detection had been due to new technologies, in his article for Brownstone Institute:

However, the increase in reported natural outbreaks on which the WHO, the World Bank, G20, and others based these claims is shown to be unfounded in a recent analysis from the UK’s University of Leeds. The main database on which most outbreak analyses rely, the GIDEON database, shows a reduction in natural outbreaks and resultant mortality over the past 10 to 15 years, with the prior increase between 1960 and 2000 fully consistent with the development of the technologies necessary to detect and record such outbreaks; PCR, antigen and serology tests, and genetic sequencing.

The WHO does not refute this but simply ignores it. Nipah viruses, for example, only ‘emerged’ in the late 1990s when we found ways to actually detect them. Now we can readily distinguish new variants of coronavirus to promote uptake of pharmaceuticals. The risk does not change by detecting them; we just change the ability to notice them. (Emphasis added.)

Clark also referred to the Leeds University paper to explain the small risk of lethal pandemics.

Deaths on the order of magnitude of Covid-19 due to naturally occurring pathogenic outbreaks are extremely rare – on the best evidence available, a once-in-129-years event. As demonstrated by researchers at Leeds University, the evidence from the last century and the first 20 years of this century shows that pandemic caseloads, frequency of outbreaks, and lethality reached a peak nearly twenty years ago and have been declining sharply ever since.

Endemic diseases more serious than pandemics

Moreover, some endemic diseases, such as tuberculosis, regularly take more lives than recent pandemics have. Davies made the point in his address to the Parliament.

Since the Spanish flu over 100 years ago, we have only had two pandemics above the average yearly seasonal influenza mortality rates, thanks to antibiotics and advances in modern medical care. We hear a lot about disease outbreaks that actually have low mortality burdens when compared to other public health threats: for example, in 2003, SARS-CoV-1—severe acute respiratory syndrome —had the equivalent disease burden of about five hours of tuberculosis. (Emphasis added.)

Spanish Flu - "It was the time, not the virus, that produced the epidemic.”

Even when a pandemic does occur, as in 1918, it may be the result of the circumstances of the time, not an inherently greater danger of a pathogen.

“Host resistance can fully explain the 1918 epidemic. That flu came near the end of the first World War, when all sides were becoming too exhausted to keep fighting. It was just months before the surrender of the Central Powers, and the war’s toll, in terms of destruction and human misery, had become overwhelming to soldiers and civilians alike. A special virus wasn’t needed to create that terrible flu epidemic.” According to Ellison, “If released today, the same 1918 flu virus wouldn’t cause any special epidemic at all. The virus wasn’t any different from any other flu virus; it was the time, not the virus, that produced the epidemic.”

Whether or not the Spanish flu was truly no more dangerous than other flu viruses, the conditions for a breakdown in “host resistance” are certainly not seen in the United States today.

Chilling predictions

This makes it all the more curious that Dr. Anthony Fauci predicted with confidence in 2017, after some 100 years passed without anything like the Spanish flu, that such a once-in-a-century event would occur in an America at peace and enjoying relative affluence.

From “Why is COVID outlasting the Spanish flu?”

Breggin related the incidence of death from the last three pandemics to the deaths from endemic diseases like tuberculosis, malaria, and HIV, and chronic diseases like cancer and cardiovascular disease, stating that even the deaths from COVID-19 were not as high as the deaths from endemic and chronic diseases.

The WHO lists three major pandemics of the last century: the influenza outbreaks in late 1950s and 1960s, and the covid-19 pandemic. The first two killed fewer than die each year from tuberculosis. The reported deaths from covid-19 never reached the level of cancer or cardiovascular disease, and remain almost irrelevant in low-income countries compared with endemic infectious diseases including tuberculosis, malaria and HIV/AIDS.

To put the pandemics in perspective, no other non-influenza outbreak recorded by the WHO that fits the definition of a pandemic—that is, the rapid spread across international borders for a limited time of a pathogen that does not normally cause significant harm—has caused greater mortality in total than a few days of tuberculosis, which kills about 4,000 a day, or more life years lost than a few days of malaria, which sadly kills 1,500 children under five every day. (Emphases added.)

Backing up Breggin’s contention of COVID-19 being irrelevant in poorer countries, is Bell’s October 2021 paper “Relative Burdens of the COVID-19, Malaria, Tuberculosis, and HIV/AIDS Epidemics in Sub-Saharan Africa.“ As seen in the following chart, from the paper’s results section, in Africa COVID was an insignificant disease; HIV, malaria, and tuberculosis were the true diseases causing illness and death in those countries. DALYs refer to “disability-adjusted life-years.”

No need to rush a treaty

Davies cautioned his fellow parliamentarians that there is no need for a rush to sign. It is far better to consider everything very carefully. Several countries beyond the U.K. have questions, as well:

It seems to me that the World Health Organisation has no need to rush any of this—we have time to reassess and get it right—and it seems I am not the only one to think that. In recent weeks, we have seen signs that some countries, including Estonia, Slovakia and New Zealand, are looking to question the proposals. It is not clear if any member states have submitted formal notices to reject them and opt out, but New Zealand does appear to have lodged a reservation to allow the incoming Government more time to consider whether the amendments are consistent with a national interest test required by New Zealand law. That is entirely sensible, and I would like to see our own Government take a pause to apply some critical thinking to this situation before blindly supporting the World Health Organisation’s installation as our new global public health power.

Peter Bridgen concluded similarly, calling their decision a choice of democracy versus fascism and authoritarianism.

If our Government, the Opposition parties and their supporters in the public health community consider that the powers currently vested in national jurisdictions should be given over to external bodies on the basis of that level of recorded harm, it would be best that we have a public conversation as to whether this is a sufficient basis for abandoning democratic ideals in favour of a more fascist and authoritarian approach. After all, we are talking about restricting basic human rights that are essential for any democracy to function.

Clark didn't think the treaty and IHR amendments were urgent initiatives either.

The urgency of putting in place new and binding arrangements in expectation of an impending global viral attack is not justified by evidence.

Do we even need a pandemic treaty?

Perhaps, considering the above lack of evidence of a coming epidemic of deathly pandemics, and particularly in light of the different needs of the various countries, such as those described by Bell's discussion of African nations, it may make more sense to walk away from the pandemic treaty altogether and focus on the particular health needs of the various countries and populations within them.

Bell stated this in his concluding section entitled “The Question Before Member States,” arguing that it makes more sense to improve health by putting resources into those activities that will be most beneficial than to concentrate on pandemic preparedness.

To summarize, while it’s sensible to prepare for outbreaks and pandemics, it’s even more sensible to improve health. This involves directing resources to where the problems are and using them in a way that does more good than harm. When people’s salaries and careers become dependent on changing reality, reality gets warped. . . .

The only real question is whether the majority of the Member States of the World Health Assembly, in their voting later this month, wish to promote a lucrative but rather amoral business strategy, or the interests of their people.

Watch Dr. David Bell in his March 2023 video below to understand more about the treaty, the international health regulations, and the parties set to benefit from the treaty.