A member of the World Health Organization (WHO) has proposed running a “simulation exercise” before implementing two instruments that will greatly increase the unelected international health agency’s powers — the international pandemic treaty/accord and amendments to the International Health Regulations (2005).
The proposal was made by a representative for the Global Preparedness Monitoring Board (GPMB), a monitoring and accountability body “to ensure preparedness for global health crises,” during the World Health Assembly (the decision-making body of the WHO’s annual meeting) last week at a strategic roundtable.
The GPMB representative said a simulation would “ensure” the success of the pandemic treaty and proposed amendments to the International Health Regulations (IHR).
“We feel very strongly that we cannot wait for the next emergency to find out how well the pandemic accord and the IHR amendments will work,” the representative said. “We need to know now. We therefore suggest that member states together with other key stakeholders carry out a simulation exercise based on the draft accord and the draft IHR amendments later this year.”
According to the GPMB representative, this simulation exercise will “provide assurance of the effectiveness” of these instruments, help “identify any remaining gaps,” and “resolve any outstanding areas of disagreement.”
The representative added that this simulation exercise should take place before the pandemic treaty and amendments to the IHR are adopted. Both instruments are due to be adopted in May 2024 which suggests that this proposed simulation exercise would take place within the next year.
Collectively, the pandemic treaty and proposed IHR amendments would greatly expand the WHO’s powers. Specifically, these instruments would give the WHO new powers to target “misinformation” and “disinformation,” grow its surveillance systems, and roll out global vaccine passports and other forms of digital tracking.
The WHO’s efforts to expand its power via these instruments has faced pushback from politicians around the world but it continues to march forward with its plans.
Despite the WHO being an unelected health agency, both instruments recognize the WHO as the “coordinating authority” during certain types of health emergencies, and if implemented, they would impact the vast majority of the world’s countries. The IHR already apply to 196 countries and any amendments will apply to these same countries. The pandemic treaty will apply to the WHO’s 194 member states. Both the treaty and the IHR amendments are legally binding under international law.
The suggestion that the WHO run a simulation exercise is eerily similar to the scenario that played out before the censorship of the New York Post’s Hunter Biden laptop story, just a few weeks before the 2020 US presidential election.
In September 2020, a month before the story was published, Facebook and Twitter execs and several reporters attended an event where they practiced how to handle “fake” Hunter Biden docs. The tech platforms that attended this event ended up swiftly censoring the real Hunter Biden laptop story a month later and many journalists downplayed or ignored it.
