John Tierney was a long-time reporter and columnist for the New York Times. He is now a contributing editor to City Journal. Among his book credits is God Is My Broker, written with Christopher Buckley. A parody of self-help books, it tells the story of Brother Ty, a failed Wall Street trader who becomes a monk and rescues his impoverished monastery by receiving receiving stock tips from God. Along the way Brother Ty discovers his 7 1/2 Laws of Spiritual and Financial Growth, among them: “As long as God knows the truth, it doesn’t matter what you tell your customers.”
I have a long worry list, but ceding American sovereignty to the farcical World Health Organization was not on it. That was before I read Tierney’s City Journal column “The WHO’s power grab.” Tierney writes:
The response to Covid was the greatest mistake in the history of the public-health profession, but the officials responsible for it are determined to do even worse. With the support of the Biden administration, the World Health Organization (WHO) is seeking unprecedented powers to impose its policies on the United States and the rest of the world during the next pandemic.
It was bad enough that America and other countries voluntarily followed WHO bureaucrats’ disastrous pandemic advice instead of heeding the scientists who had presciently warned, long before 2020, that lockdowns, school closures, and mandates for masks and vaccines would be futile, destructive, and unethical. It was bad enough that U.S. officials and the corporate media parroted the WHO’s false claims and ludicrous praise of China’s response. But now the WHO wants new authority to make its bureaucrats’ whims mandatory—and to censor those who disagree with their version of “the science.”
The news here, it seems to me, is the Biden administration’s intention to agree to the “treaty”:
The WHO hopes to begin this power grab in May at its annual assembly in Geneva, where members will vote on proposed changes in international health regulations and a new treaty governing pandemics. Pamela Hamamoto, the State Department official representing the U.S. in negotiations, has already declared that America is committed to signing a pandemic treaty that will “build a stronger global health architecture,” which is precisely what we don’t need.
I wrote to ask about Tierney’s reference to what’s coming down the pike as a “treaty.” Would it require Senate ratification? He responded:
Although it’s commonly referred to as a pandemic treaty — because it is a treaty being signed by nations — the WHO’s formal name for it is the “Pandemic Agreement,” a term that seems to have been chosen in the hope that it won’t be considered a formal treaty requiring approval by the Senate. If the Biden administration signs it without seeking Senate approval, presumably a subsequent president could abrogate it, although I suppose they could insert legalese making it complicated to withdraw quickly.
That’s why there’s a Republican bill in the Senate that would require Senate approval for any sort of legally binding agreement with WHO. That would cover not just the treaty but also the amendments to the International Health Regulations being voted on in May — and those amendments, as I wrote, contain the most worrisome proposals for expanding WHO’s powers.
Read the whole thing here or via the tweet below.
The response to Covid was the worst mistake in the history of the public-health profession, but the officials responsible are planning to do even worse next time: The WHO’s Power Grab https://t.co/vcKHBEPViA
— John Tierney (@JohnTierneyNYC) April 1, 2024
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