Did the WHO Ram Through the (Failed) 'Pandemic™ Treaty' via the IHR?

A libertarian group from Switzerland argues that what transpired in Geneva on 1 June 2024 is way more than meets the eye

Thanks to the cease- and tireless efforts of

James Roguski

, those who wanted could follow the (d)evolution of the WHO-led negotiations of a so-called ‘Pandemic™ Treaty’ and its evil twin, the amendments to the International Health Regulations (hence IHR) in all but real-time.

As virtually all reporting has it, last Saturday, a much-watered down, minimum version of the IHR was accepted (despite them being technically illegal, null, and void due to the fact that revised IHR were only published moments before the vote, as opposed to the required 4+ months prior (see Art. 55 title 2 of the IHR of 2005):

The text of any proposed amendment shall be communicated to all States Parties by the Director-General at least four months before the Health Assembly at which it is proposed for consideration.

That being said, since it is now quite clearly established that laws and constitutions aren’t that reliable, we must discuss the contents of the revised IHR.

As regards what follows, I presume your knowledge of, at least familiarity with, what transpired in Geneva late last Saturday. For the WHO’s take, please see here.

And for that, we turn to the Aktionsbündnis Freie Schweiz (lit. Action-Association Free Switzerland) who hold a very different view of what transpired in Geneva last Saturday.

The below content comes to you in my translation, with emphases added.

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The Final Changes to the Adopted IHR are Serious

Via ABF Switzerland, 2 June 2024 [source]

ABF Switzerland was live on site in Geneva on the last day of the 77th World Health Assembly (WHA) when the amendments to the International Health Regulations (IHR) were adopted at a late hour. As announced, ABF Switzerland is closely monitoring the WHO-led negotiations. We have therefore critically analysed the final version of the IHR today and explain the most drastic changes…

The Definition of a Pandemic Emergency

The WHO media release points out that the ‘pandemic emergency’ has now been redefined. According to this definition, a pandemic is [the following quote is from the above-linked WHO press release]

a communicable disease that has, or is at high risk of having, wide geographical spread to and within multiple States, exceeds or is at high risk of exceeding the capacity of health systems to respond in those States; causes, or is at high risk of causing, substantial social and/or economic disruption, including disruption to international traffic and trade; and requires rapid, equitable and enhanced coordinated international action, with whole-of-government and whole-of-society approaches.

So if there is already a ‘high risk’, we have a health emergency that can trigger all further measures provided for in the IHR. In other words, practically always and at any time. The question may now be asked, who determines when a ‘high risk’ exists?

New Agencies at State Level

States are obliged to create new state authorities to implement the IHR. The IHR refer to ‘National IHR Authorities’, which are responsible for coordinating the implementation of the IHR, and ‘National IHR Focal Points’. These contact points must be accessible to the WHO IHR Contact Points at all times. This obliges countries to forward information and data to the WHO on the one hand and to establish permanent crisis teams on the other…

If states were to point out in this regard that they remain sovereign in the implementation of these domestic authorities, this would be a concealment of the actual circumstances. After all, the ‘orders’ will come from the WHO once the IHR has been transposed into national law. They are therefore basically national branches of the WHO, but this should not be directly visible.

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Redefining ‘Relevant Health Products’

This is why I urge everyone not familiar with the concept of ‘transposition’ to read up on this by visiting my piece on ‘how the EU works’—exactly like this.

Furthermore, the devil isn’t merely in these legalistic details, it’s literally all over the place, such as in the section on ‘relevant health products’, which are, according to the definitions of the revised IHR,

those health products needed to respond to public health emergencies of international concern, including pandemic emergencies, which may include medicines, vaccines, diagnostics, medical devices, vector control products, personal protective equipment, decontamination products, assistive products, antidotes, cell- and gene-based therapies, and other health technologies

Basically everything plus the kitchen sink, if WHO declares a ‘pandemic emergency’ first.

Here’s ABF Switzerland’s comment:

What may sound plausible and harmless here is a very significant and critical expansion of the definition of relevant health products. In plain language, it means that we are being forced to authorise cell and gene-based therapies on ourselves in every health emergency declared by the WHO itself…While compulsory vaccination in the conventional sense is already unacceptable, cell and gene therapy (with unknown consequences) is even more so.

On Travel Restrictions

More from ABF Switzerland:

The fact that a member state shall now also force travellers it deems ‘dangerous’ in terms of their state of health into isolation and quarantine and that (private) transport companies are turned into the state's henchmen by having to check travellers on board was already stipulated in Article 27 and some other articles of the previous version. However, this possibility has now been tightened up again and it has been specified exactly what the required health documents, more specifically the certificates and QR codes familiar to us from the coronavirus crisis. It can be assumed that it was the WHO's wish that these should only be recognised in digital form. However, there were apparently objections to this from the countries of the Global South. At this point, it is important to see through the actual agenda of these articles. It is obviously about being able to restrict international travel at any time (see the sustainability goals of the 2030 Agenda) or limiting it to travellers who undergo the necessary ‘measures’ in advance (vaccination, tests, etc.). In the broadest sense, this could be seen as an indirect obligation to be vaccinated.

Nothing new under the sun, it would seem, and I’d add that the logic behind this reading is, well, clearly recognisable.

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Partial Integration of the Pandemic Treaty in Art. 13 seq.

This is among the more ‘direct’ and ‘controversial’ segments in ABF Switzerland’s brief, but I think it’s worth considering:

Particular attention should also be paid to Article 13 ‘Measures in the field of public health, including equitable access to relevant health products’, which has been greatly expanded and at first glance appears (a detailed analysis still needs to be carried out) as if parts of the WHO pandemic agreement have been incorporated here. This is probably because no agreement has yet been reached on the text of the pandemic treaty. For those of us who insist on our self-determination and physical integrity the WHO pandemic agreement, at least in its latest published version, is of secondary importance and less threatening than the IHR. This is because this treaty is more of a trade agreement for those players who will bring the aforementioned ‘relevant health products’ onto the market. This shows how imperative it is to keep a close eye on the further development of this agreement.

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ABF Switzerland’s ‘Preliminary Interpretation’

The expert opinion commissioned by ABF Switzerland concludes that the amended IHR must be submitted to Parliament, as otherwise Switzerland's sovereign right would be affected…In order to allow sufficient time for the parliamentary review process, the Federal Council must now declare the opting-out without delay [there is a clause in Art. 13 of the revised IHR that envisions an additional 2 years for domestic review]. Parliament, which has overall control over the Federal Council, must request the latter to make this declaration within the deadline. This is the only way to ensure that the amended IHR are democratically legitimised. This corresponds to one of our demands to politicians.

Well put, and this is what everyone should demand of his or her politicians.

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Bottom Lines

This is bad, with or without consideration of ABF Switzerland’s ‘preliminary’ reading. Time will tell if their interpretation is closer to reality than those voiced by legacy media and politicians. (My money is on ABF Switzerland.)

If there’s a silver lining, the new bureaucracy that is supposedly to be created will result in endless turf wars, hot debates about funding it (continuously), and, of course, the issue of domestic sinecures in appointing personnel to these presumably well-paid, mostly tax-exempted de facto ‘international’ positions. This will have the certainly unintended consequence that whoever gets to ‘work’ at the National IHR Focal Points (or whatever they will be called) will be so compromised in terms of funding, capacity, and quality of the appointees that major f***-ups are all but certain.

Even if unintended, this will seriously harm lots of people, esp. as—with the affirmation of ‘equity’ (read: socialism) and its evil sibling, ideological conformity—what others are calling ‘medical Lysenkoism’ will kill many more. Whenever the ‘public’ (or private, for that matter) sector prioritises conformity over competence, shenanigans occur, often, as is the case in healthcare, with deadly consequences.

Make no mistake, what happened on Saturday in Geneva is an abomination, and I fear that ABF Switzerland’s interpretation is very important—but there’s also another aspect that begs consideration:

Most human-built, gargantuan, multi-level institutions fail, some faster than others, but when they do, it’s a sight to behold.

In the Great Depression, FD Roosevelt created many new institutions from scratch, allegedly because he understood that all of the new agencies would atrophy with a few years. (Via John Flynn’s masterful, if censored, FDR account published in the late 1940s.)

A Side-Note on Institution-Building

There is nothing on my mind that will change this dynamic.

A new institution is cobbled together, which means personnel disputes, turf wars, funding struggles, and, of course, the perennial accomplice of bureaucracy, changes in responsibility. This typically comes about ‘from above’ in the form of orders, which also means it’s a) reversible and b) subject to no written and/or logical considerations. Subservience and the prolongation of whatever is going on, in addition to keeping ‘responsibilities’ once held in Dept. A, quickly becomes the raison d’être. There is nothing in human affairs that hasn’t played out along these lines.

Speaking broadly, human institutions under the conditions of (post)modernity tend to fall into two categories: state and private conglomerates, of Big Gov’t and Big Biz. Both are applying, technically, integration mechanisms that differ in degree, not kind: whereas Big Gov’t seeks to integrate matters horizontally, Big Biz strives for vertical integration; put differently, the former aims at controlling various layers of society, human interaction, etc. while the latter seeks to dominate all aspects of the supply chain. With WHO sitting somewhere ‘in-between’—a ‘public-private partnership’, if there ever was one—the resulting idiosyncrasies will stymie most efforts within a few years, if only because of redundancies, funding and turf wars, and the egos of those who give the orders vs. those who are supposedly going to follow them.

Finally, there’s also the notion of transposition. While it means, technically, the adaptation of national legislation to fit whatever is coming from outside (here: the IHR), this is typically done by adding copious amounts of language to laws, regulations, ordinances, etc. This will render any implementation of the revised IHR massively cumbersome, esp. if some countries will not implement these revisions. Moreover, given the resulting court challenges, polarisation will increase, esp. if we ever (sic) get a replay of the WHO-declared, so-called ‘Covid Pandemic™’.

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Epilogue

The new IHR are bad, no doubt about it.

Those gov’ts should all be chased out of town.

And we should have special tribunals for those who directed the WHO-declared, so-called ‘Covid Pandemic™’.

I’m not naive enough to consider that any of these things will happen before too long. Yet, we must never forget the essential aspect of human agency:

No tyrant has ever been stopped by continued compliance.

Do not consent. Do not comply.