{"id":270486,"date":"2023-07-30T20:33:44","date_gmt":"2023-07-30T18:33:44","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/climatescience.press\/?p=270486"},"modified":"2023-07-30T20:33:47","modified_gmt":"2023-07-30T18:33:47","slug":"the-german-origins-of-the-pandemic-treaty","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/climatescience.press\/?p=270486","title":{"rendered":"The German Origins of the Pandemic Treaty"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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From The Daily Sceptic<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

By\u00a0ROBERT KOGON<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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With the WHO hurtling towards adoption of the \u2018Pandemic Treaty\u2019, as well as revisions of its International Health Regulations (IHR) which some knowledgeable observers regard as even more consequential, a leading theory among opponents appears to be that the changes will consolidate the power of the WHO bureaucracy and hence of private interests which allegedly control the latter.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But,\u00a0prima facie<\/em>, the theory makes little sense. The WHO is, after all \u2013\u00a0like, say, the UN or the World Trade Organisation \u2013 an international organisation, in which negotiations take place among member\u00a0states<\/em>\u00a0and decisions are made by them. Private sources can contribute as much funding as they like, and this may well give them influence, but it will not give them a seat at the negotiating table or a vote. Without precisely state sponsorship, a project like the Pandemic Treaty and the related revisions of the IHR could not even get off the ground.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And, lo and behold, if we go back far enough \u2013 before hardly anyone will have ever even heard the expression \u2018pandemic treaty\u2019 \u2013 we discover that the treaty did indeed have a state sponsor and that, unsurprisingly, the state in question is the very same state which, if albeit unbeknownst to the broader public, was the driving force behind the WHO\u2019s COVID-19 \u2018pandemic response\u2019: namely, Germany.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Thus, referring to then German Minister of Health Jens Spahn, the headline of a May 24th 2021 report from Germany\u2019s\u00a0dpa\u00a0<\/em>wire service reads: \u2018Spahn Pushes for International Treaty: How the WHO Wants to Prevent a New Pandemic<\/a>\u2018.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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But the article is not in fact about how\u00a0the WHO<\/em>\u00a0wants to prevent a future pandemic, but rather about how\u00a0Germany wants the WHO<\/em>\u00a0to prevent a future pandemic. Thus, the accompanying blurb reads: \u201cHow can a catastrophe like the Corona pandemic be prevented in the future? With a UN treaty, Germany and other countries believe. At the WHO meeting, they want to break the resistance of other countries.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The article goes on to narrate how Germany and its allies wanted to use the WHO\u2019s annual assembly, which was being held remotely that year and which began on that very day, in order to \u201cfire off the starting pistol for an international pandemic treaty\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And so it would come to pass. By the end of the yearly event, a few days later, then German Chancellor Angela Merkel and a somewhat rag-tag band of two dozen other world leaders would publish a\u00a0joint statement<\/a>\u00a0calling for the conclusion of a pandemic treaty. The signatories included many frankly minor figures like the Prime Ministers of Fiji and of Trinidad and Tobago, as well as heads of international organisations \u2013 like none other than WHO Director-General Tedros \u2013 but also somewhat weightier figures like then British Prime Minister Boris Johnson and French President Emmanuel Macron.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cStates have to commit to cooperating and to the implementation of jointly established rules,\u201d Spahn told the\u00a0dpa<\/em>. \u201cSo as not to remain at the level of pious wishes,\u201d the article continues.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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A legally binding treaty is planned: whoever takes part has to abide by it. A form of compulsion is supposed to come into being: practically only rogue states could then afford not to cooperate and they would have to count on international condemnation.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

Speaking of private versus state interests, by this time, in mid-2021, Germany had shot past the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation to become the WHO\u2019s largest funder, nearly quadrupling its contribution overnight in a funding effort which the\u00a0dpa\u00a0<\/em>report explicitly links to its desire to lead the world in pandemic prevention and response. Germany\u2019s contribution thus reached nearly $1.15 billion for the 2020-21 funding period (as can be seen\u00a0here<\/a>).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

All of the additional funding was, of course, voluntary (Germany\u2019s assessed contribution as member state represented a mere 5% of the total), and nearly all of it was earmarked precisely for the WHO\u2019s COVID-19 response budget. As in previous years, the bulk of Gates Foundation funding, by contrast, continued to be devoted to polio eradication. (See flowchart\u00a0here<\/a>.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Thus, more to the point, if Germany\u2019s total contribution to the WHO budget easily surpassed that of the Gates Foundation, its specific contribution to the COVID-19 response budget dwarfed that of the Gates Foundation. The below graphs generated from the WHO database clearly illustrate this fact for 2020, with Germany\u2019s $425 million contribution leading the pack by a wide margin and the Gates Foundation\u2019s mere $15 million trailing even the likes of Yemen!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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In 2021, Germany would continue to lead the pack, with the European Commission, under former German Minister of Defence Ursula von der Leyen, now upping its game and finishing (a distant) second. The combined pledges of Germany ($406 million) and the Commission ($160 million) would represent around half of the WHO\u2019s total COVID-19 response budget. The Gates Foundation contribution would fall to just $10 million. (See the WHO database\u00a0here<\/a>, selecting \u2018SPRP 2021\u2019, and for further discussion, my earlier article\u00a0here<\/a>.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Moreover, Germany was not only massively funding the WHO\u2019s COVID-19 response. It was also uniquely well-positioned within the organisation to influence the development of the Pandemic Treaty and the revisions of the International Health Regulations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Thus, the\u00a0dpa\u00a0<\/em>report notes that \u201ca WHO expert commission led by Lothar Wieler, the Head of the Robert Koch Institute,\u201d had recommended the quick dispatch of \u201ccrisis teams\u201d to the area of a \u201cpandemic outbreak\u201d. This procedure is supposed to be \u201canchored in the treaty\u201d, i.e., to be mandatory whether a country wants to receive such \u2018crisis teams\u2019 or not.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A commission led by Lothar Wieler, the Head of the Robert Koch Institute? The Robert Koch Institute (RKI) is none other than the German public heath authority. Wieler\u2019s leading such a commission is as if Rochelle Walensky would lead a WHO expert commission\u00a0while still heading the CDC<\/em>\u00a0or, say, Anthony Fauci would lead a WHO expert commission while still heading NIAID.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Wieler, who has since stepped down from his position as head of the RKI, chaired the WHO\u2019s \u2018Review Committee on the Functioning of the International Health Regulations during the COVID-19 Response\u2019, which undoubtedly played a key role in developing the proposed revisions of the IHR. This is perhaps the commission to which the\u00a0dpa\u00a0<\/em>report is referring.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Wieler is also a long-time champion of the so-called \u2018One Health\u2019 approach, focusing on \u2018zoonotic\u2019 or animal origins of human diseases, which is at the very heart of the proposed Pandemic Treaty. (See the \u2018zero draft\u2019\u00a0here<\/a>\u00a0and the Wieler-edited volume\u00a0here<\/a>.) Wieler is a veterinarian, incidentally.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As further evidence of Germany\u2019s commitment to \u2018pandemic prevention\u2019, the\u00a0dpa\u00a0<\/em>report also points to a German Government grant of \u20ac30 million ($33m, \u00a326m) to the WHO to create a \u201cpandemic early warning centre\u201d in Berlin. The \u20ac30 million would soon become $100 million (\u20ac90m, \u00a377m) and the \u2018early warning system\u2019 would become the Hub for Pandemic and Epidemic Intelligence, which was\u00a0inaugurated in Berlin<\/a>\u00a0\u2013 just three months later! \u2013 on September 1st 2021, by Chancellor Merkel and WHO Director-General Tedros.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Although the hub is commonly described as a WHO centre, it is in fact run as a full-fledged partnership between the WHO and none other than the German public health authority, the RKI. On that same September 1st 2021, Wieler and Tedros marked the creation of the partnership with a celebratory elbow-bump, as can be seen in the above picture taken from the RKI tweet\u00a0here<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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1\/3 One year ago today, @DrTedros<\/a> @WHO<\/a> came to #RKI<\/a> to sign a Memorandum of Understanding with @mikrowie<\/a>. We are founding partner of the #WHOPandemicHub<\/a> #Berlin<\/a>. @BMG_Bund<\/a> supports to strengthen global pandemic readiness.

\u27a1\ufe0fhttps:\/\/t.co\/72IGJTatf5<\/a>

\u27a1\ufe0fhttps:\/\/t.co\/jcHQq9h0tl<\/a> pic.twitter.com\/iDwOdftiU8<\/a><\/p>— Robert Koch-Institut (@rki_de) September 1, 2022<\/a><\/blockquote>