By Stephen Smoot
In the old comedy routine, Bud Abbott tried to let Lou Costello know the names of the players on his favorite baseball team. The joke comes from the fact that a generation of immigrants had flooded urban areas with unfamiliar sounding last names.
Costello says “what’s the name of the first baseman?”
Abbott replies “who.”
The response from Costello is that’s what he’s asking and the routine hilariously runs from there.
But what WHO, the World Health Organization proposes and the Biden-Harris Administration seem to wish to accept, is not funny at all.
Governor Jim Justice and more than 20 other state governors signed a letter to express their concerns with introducing ”a new “Pandemic Agreement” (Treaty) that would undermine national sovereignty, infringe upon states’ rights, and jeopardize constitutionally guaranteed freedoms.”
Additionally, it would “gain unilateral power to declare a ‘public health emergency of international concern’ (PHEIC) in member nations, extending beyond pandemics to include a
range of perceived emergencies.”
The letter goes on to say that “Furthermore, these instruments would erode sovereignty by granting the WHO’s Director-General the authority to dictate responses to a declared PHEIC, stripping elected representatives of their role in setting public health policies and compelling citizens to comply with WHO directives, potentially including mandates regarding medical treatments.”
The proposal also would give WHO the power to combat the ubiquitous fake threat of “misinformation.”
Scandal rocked this same World Health Organization just in this decade. In 2020, a Reuters connected outlet called The New Humanitarian reported that during WHO’s response to Ebola, 51 women were victimized by WHO workers using promises of jobs or threats to compel the women to have sex with them.
WHO’s own investigation confirmed that over 80 attacks took place and 21 of the men were verified to be their workers. It is not clear which result was more outrageous, the fact that they fired no one (much less have perpetrators prosecuted) or that they paid $250 each to 103 women who claimed to be assaulted.
Even then, the women were “required to complete training courses intended to help them start “income-generating activities,” according to a Voice of America report.
And the Biden-Harris Administration wants this organization to have power and authority in American local communities?
Only 10 years prior, a European Parliament investigation uncovered a “pandemic scandal” in which WHO collaborated with pharmaceutical companies and academic scientists to create verified fake news.
According to Forbes, “the WHO’s April 2009 decision to raise the pandemic flu threat to the penultimate level, Phase 5, “Pandemic Imminent,” was unwarranted and far outpaced the data accumulated. Even worse was the June declaration that a pandemic was under way, which exposed the WHO’s flawed fundamental paradigm.”
WHO, without evidence, called for the international community to recognize as the highest possible pandemic threat over a mild strain of the flu.
The United States cannot constitutionally cede authority of this type, even under treaty. Even ratified treaties must abide by the United States Constitution and the powers sought by WHO, if used, would violate the Bill of Rights.
Moreover, Leftists have worked to move many of their issues of interest into the public health realm to sidestep the typical discussions and processes that generally block them from implementation. Racism, for example, is a social issue, but the Left wishes to push it into the purview of public health.
Under no circumstances does it belong there.
With the track record of WHO, the discussion should not be whether or not it should be granted unconstitutional authority.
The question is, should the organization even exist at all?