I feel strongly
Why we should be wary and step out
This submission is a long read. Please take from it what you like and consider adding your voice, by making a submission to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade.
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To the Pandemic Instrument Coordinator, Legal Division, Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade, Private Bag 18-901, Wellington.
Attention also: Minister of Foreign Affairs Winston Peters and Associate Minister Todd McClay
February 13, 2024
Submission re: WHO’s campaign to Improve pandemic prevention, preparedness and response with a legal instrument
Considering the implications of the WHO’s bid for global authority, I feel strongly that:
The government of Aotearoa New Zealand and its representatives at the World Health Assembly should reject both the WHO package of International Health Regulations amendments and the proposed WHO CA+ treaty.
The New Zealand government should enact legislation that will enable it to exit the WHO.
The WHO aims to become the world’s health authority.
The measures it is negotiating will be legally binding on member states.
That means that, if the documents are adopted by a required number of member states, unelected officials will be empowered to require governments to implement aggressive restrictions.
In effect, the WHO is passing the buck to governments. In turn governments will be able to justify WHO directed measures by citing WHO obligations.
The instruments threaten to put power in the hands of a group of unelected officials, who will cherry pick their own experts and censor opposing views. There are no checks and balances.
The obligations outlined in WHO documents are undemocratic, expensive and a threat to individual human rights.
The Intergovernmental Negotiating Body (INB) is negotiating a treaty, supported by a bureau comprising representatives from member states. See negotiating text. MFAT is participating in the negotiations and is currently seeking views that will help inform its contribution.
The Working Group on Amendments to the International Health Regulations (WGIHR) should have released its final draft four months ahead of the 77th World Health Assembly in May 2024 but has failed to meet that deadline.
The former Labour government’s Cabinet Business Committee supported a system that ‘strengthens the performance of the World Health Organisation’.Cabinet papers
MFAT asks:
Are there aspects of the proposals to date which you think New Zealand should support or oppose? YES.
Is there any information you would like to provide that would help develop New Zealand’s position on negotiations for a new pandemic treaty? YES.
Do we have permission to contact you in the future if we do additional consultation related to this? YES.
Feedback may be submitted at any time during the negotiations.
In 2022, when MFAT initially sought feedback from New Zealanders on the negotiations, ten respondents submitted concerns that the COVID vaccines were ineffective, unsafe or insufficiently tested. MFAT dismissed this concern as ‘not finding basis in reality’.
There is now clear evidence that the mRNA vaccine did not prevent COVID transmission or infection, as promised and it is clear that the COVID vaccines caused deaths and thousands of adverse events.
Will MFAT again treat these evidence based concerns with such disdain and bias?
Tentacles of power
According to a meeting of the INB, held in October last year, the WHO should coordinate an international network of laboratories that conduct year-round surveillance of pathogens with pandemic potential - including waste water monitoring.
That means the WHO will be able to identify pathogens it deems might be a risk to public health and then put in place rules that member states are bound to implement, relating to choice of drugs, border closures, vaccine passports, sharing intellectual property and animal health.
This situation offers an array of business opportunities for the health and pharmaceutical industry.
Censorship
The INB warns about too much information, false or misleading information during a disease outbreak. They claim it causes confusion and risk-taking behaviours that can harm health. They warn it leads to mistrust in health authorities and undermines public health and social measures. This attitude suggests the WHO wants to repeat the past when governments collaborated with mainstream media and social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, and Google by removing or flagging “misinformation” related to COVID-19 and the vaccine..
Reject any attempt to censor those who question.
Article 3.
There are glaring contradictions between the objectives of the treaty and proposed amendments to the IHR. The treaty document says parties will be guided by respect for human rights with full respect for the dignity, human rights and fundamental freedoms of persons while the legally binding provisions of the IHR amendments threaten individual human rights relating to informed consent, freedom of movement and expression.
Article 18 of the IHR amendments lists recommendations issued by WHO that may include the following advice:
review travel history in affected areas
review proof of medical examination and any laboratory analysis
require medical examinations
review proof of vaccination or other prophylaxis
require vaccination or other prophylaxis
place suspect persons under public health observation
implement quarantine or other health measures for suspect persons
implement isolation and treatment where necessary of affected persons
implement tracing of contacts of suspect or affected persons
refuse entry of suspect and affected persons
refuse entry of unaffected persons to affected areas
implement exit screening and/or restrictions on persons from affected areas
Transferring responsibility
WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said on February 12, 2024:
“The draft agreement is available on the WHO website for anyone who wants to read it. And anyone who does will not find a single sentence or a single word giving WHO any power over sovereign states…That’s because it’s sovereign states themselves who are writing the agreement. Why would they agree to cede sovereignty to WHO? We cannot allow this historic agreement, this milestone in global health, to be sabotaged by those who spread lies, either deliberately or unknowingly. Let me be clear: WHO did not impose anything on anyone during the COVID-19 pandemic. Not lockdowns, not mask mandates, not vaccine mandates.”
Exactly! His argument is calculating and manipulative.
New Zealand indeed followed WHO’s COVID pandemic guidelines, which were simply advisory at the time. Under the proposed IHR amendments, recommendations will become legally binding.
Tedros' argument is disingenuous, born of desperation to push the treaty and amended health regulations through at the World Health Assembly in May.
This underscores the responsibility shouldered by MFAT, the Ministry of Health and our delegates to the WHO, who will approve or reject these documents on our behalf.
I submit that we should be able to accept or reject WHO advice on its merits, as in the past, and we can do so without approving its two documents.
MFAT should question the argument put forth by the WHO director-general and reject it.
Financial contribution
Parties to the treaty shall, in line with Article 16, develop channels to enhance financial and technical support to promote and implement the One Health approach at the national level.
Each party shall assess, no less than every five years, the functioning of perceived gaps in, its pandemic preparedness, surveillance and multisectoral response capacity, logistics and supply chain management, and risk assessment. Each party shall support the simulation or tabletop exercises and reviews, based on tools and guidelines developed by WHO in partnership with relevant organisations.
What exactly will it entail and what will it cost?
The WHO’s proposed funding mechanism shall include a capacity development fund that shall be resourced through annual monetary contributions from parties to the WHO Pandemic Agreement.
What will this cost New Zealand? I submit that the money spent would be better used to improve our own under-resourced health system.
The parties shall establish, no later than 31 December 2026, a global peer review mechanism to assess pandemic prevention, preparedness and response capacities.
Exactly what will this entail? How much will it cost?
Article 5. One Health
The parties will commit to address the drivers of pandemics and the emergence and reemergence of disease at the human-animal-environment interface.
This “One Health approach” opens the WHO to become actively involved in what it describes as ecosystems. This will allow it to expand its authority into climate change, food production, management of domestic and wild animals etc.
The threat of overbearing and rigid WHO dictates is real. Can MFAT discuss the necessity for checks and balances?
Of major concern is the proposal for a Conference of Parties (Article 21).
This unelected but authoritative body will be made up of unelected delegates from member states. They will review the application of the WHO treaty and take decisions necessary to promote its implementation. These officials may adopt amendments, annexes and protocols to the treaty.
Please respond to these questions:
Who are these delegates?
Who appoints them?
Who briefs them?
To whom are they answerable?
What are their qualifications?
Do they have speaking and voting rights?
What are they told to do and how to vote?
What is their job description?
Has the WHO strategy for expanded power been discussed in our Parliament?
Will it be discussed in Parliament before the World Health Assembly vote in Geneva in May?
The Conference of the Parties shall operate in coordination with the WHO’s governing body, the World Health Assembly.
Each member shall have one vote in the Conference of the Parties.
Each country shall submit to the Conference of the Parties periodic reports on its implementation of the WHO Pandemic Agreement.
The Conference of the Parties shall establish subsidiary bodies such as a Compliance Committee.
To administer discipline, the WHO wants to establish yet another bureaucracy - a Secretariat for the WHO Pandemic Agreement. I submit that New Zealand, through MFAT and the Ministry of Health, should reject this WHO strategy to police a draconian code of laws.
Article 11 outlines a trade agreement relating to the transfer of technology and know-how that will not necessarily benefit New Zealand. Reject it.
Article 12 relates to pathogen access and benefit sharing (WHO PABS). The parties shall ensure that all components of the WHO PABS System are operational no later
than 31 May 2025. Each party, through its relevant public health authorities and authorised laboratories, shall provide WHO PABS material to a laboratory recognised or designated as part of an established WHO coordinated laboratory network.
This is yet another heavy-handed WHO demand that should concern MFAT. Please consider the ramifications of this demand and reject it.
Article 12 concerns so called benefit sharing:
The parties shall use a Standard Material Transfer Agreement. This instrument shall include benefit-sharing obligations, such as: in the event of a pandemic, access by WHO to a minimum of 20 percent of the production of safe, efficacious and effective pandemic-related products for distribution based on public health risks and needs. The WHO PABS System shall be recognised as an international access and benefit-sharing instrument.
MFAT should carefully assess the ramifications of this trade dictate on national sovereignty and should reject it.
Article 13 - Global Supply Chain and Logistics Network
The parties shall ‘monitor, regulate and strengthen rapid alert systems against
substandard and falsified pandemic-related products’.
The COVID vaccine was approved for emergency use on the grounds that there were no adequate, approved, and available alternatives. This explains the determined push against repurposed drugs, such as Ivermectin, at the time.
This clause is another subtle attack on repurposed drugs that will benefit pharmaceutical companies, not patients. Reject it.
Each party shall take steps to ensure that it has the ‘legal, administrative and financial frameworks’ in place to support approval of pandemic-related products during a pandemic. What due diligence will MFAT require in future, following the mRNA vaccine debacle when thousands of adverse events were experienced and recorded?
Article 18 relates to communication and public awareness
The parties will be required to combat ‘false, misleading, misinformation or disinformation’,
They shall ‘conduct research and inform policies on factors that hinder adherence to public health and social measures in a pandemic and trust in science and public health institutions.’
Remember the Labour government’s infamous “We will continue to be your single source of truth” campaign during the COVID pandemic. It blocked scientific debate and punished those who dared to express a different view.
Stuff’s ‘The Whole Truth’ platform told us in 2021, ‘Long-term side-effects of Covid vaccination are not a thing’?
Subsequent data indicates that the vaccine is indeed far more risky than we were led to believe.
Between 18 February 2021 and 8 July 2023, ACC received 3,954 claims for injuries relating to the Covid vaccination. 1,585 claims were accepted, 2,250 were declined.
July 2023 GOV-015769 Data related to COVID-19 vaccinations
According to a narrative review published on January 27 in Clinical and Experimental Medicine, repeated COVID-19 vaccination may increase the likelihood of experiencing SARS-CoV-2 infection and other pathologies: “The opportunity for mRNA vaccine boosters to impair the immune system response needs careful consideration, as this impacts the cost-to-benefit ratio of the boosters’ practice.”
Note that Stuff’s ‘Whole Truth’ promotion received funding from the Google News Initiative.
This initiative is called the ‘Covid-19 Vaccine Counter-Misinformation Open Fund’ and is intended to ‘support journalistic efforts to effectively fact-check misinformation about the Covid-19 immunisation process, with a concentration on projects that aim to reach audiences under-served by fact-checking or targeted by misinformation.’
MFAT should reject the WHO’s proposal to regulate media and online content and take it for what it is - censorship and propaganda.
Article 26.
“No reservations may be made to the WHO Pandemic Agreement.”
What does this mean? Under modern treaty law, a reservation is when a unilateral statement is made by a state when signing or ratifying a treaty.
Please supply legal advice on what this truly means for New Zealand.
The WHO continues to trot out figures relating to the threat of future pandemics. The World Health Organisation used mathematical modelling to claim that, in 2021 alone, the COVID-19 vaccines saved more than 14.4 million lives globally.
How did it arrive at this figure? One of its authors of the paper it used, received personal consultancy fees from HSBC, GlaxoSmithKline and WHO. She was a member of scientific advisory boards for Moderna and the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness. Other authors received personal consultancy related to COVID-19 work from WHO. The work was supported by a Schmidt Science Fellowship in partnership with the Rhodes Trust, grant funding from WHO, Gavi, The Vaccine Alliance, and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.
Note that at a global level, pre-vaccination infection fatality rate from COVID-19 may have been as low as 0.03 percent and 0.07 percent for 0–59 and 0–69 year old people.
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S001393512201982X
How is the WHO doing in terms of vaccine safety?
The WHO has a Global Advisory Committee on Vaccine Safety. This body provides advice to WHO on vaccine safety issues of global or regional concern, with the potential to affect immunisation programmes.
A further subcommittee was set up in 2020 to deal with COVID-19, called GACVS COVID-19 Sub-committee).
This subcommittee operated until November 2022 when it was disbanded.
The only two signals that it raised were from the original vaccine formulations: anaphylaxis among those aged 18–64 years for both BNT162b2 and mRNA-1273 bivalent vaccines and myocarditis/pericarditis among those aged 18–35 years for the BNT162b2 bivalent vaccine.
Reviewing all COVID-19 vaccine safety updates, the subcommittee expressed no new concerns regarding the safety of bivalent COVID-19 vaccines but acknowledged that new formulations of COVID-19 vaccines would continue to arrive, requiring ongoing surveillance.
Regarding myocarditis, it expressed no new concerns but stressed the importance of continued and long-term monitoring, particularly for children and adolescents.
Altogether the subcommittee issued ten statements on safety issues related to COVID-19 vaccines, and reviewed eight safety topics, including safety during pregnancy, vaccine booster doses and vaccination errors in children.
So this subcommittee, which provided advice on the overall safety of the COVID-19 vaccines, has been dumped but we’re told that the WHO’s pharmacovigilance officials (the PVG team) will continue to monitor safety signals, in particular, the long-term impact of signals, such as COVID-19 vaccine-related myocarditis, pregnancy outcomes and Guillain-Barré syndrome.
https://iris.who.int/bitstream/handle/10665/366342/WER9809-eng-fre.pdf?sequence=1
We are taught that the foundation of science relies on data transparency. The WHO is yet to produce data about COVID-19 vaccine injuries.
In the meantime it continues to advise that the vaccines are safe and effective and that serious or long-lasting side effects are ‘possible but extremely rare’.
In fact the WHO says you should get vaccinated if you are pregnant, breastfeeding or planning to get pregnant.
The WHO recently advertised for experts to serve as members of the Global Advisory Committee on Vaccine Safety (GACVS). This body will provide recommendations that are intended to assist WHO in formulating policies regarding vaccine safety issues. Applications closed on January 4 2024
In conclusion, I would like to share a view from John Ioannidis president of the Association of American Physicians.
He warns that the consequences of epidemic waves and of adopted measures on health, society, economy, civilization and democracy may perpetuate a pandemic legacy long after the pandemic itself has ended.
“Mandates and measures that discriminate against people based on their pandemic-related status (e.g. vaccination record) may be particularly problematic. One should avoid fostering divisiveness, discord and backsliding of democracy standards.” - John P. A. Ioannidis
I thank you for reading to the end of my submission.
Respectfully
Keri Molloy
Phone: +64 211687204
Email: kerimolloy2@gmail.com
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An incredible amount of work to distill what is intended into a succinct and useful way for all of us to understand. Bless you Keri!
Thank you Keri - much appreciated