![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.aier.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/10\/Tedros-800x508.jpg\")
<\/figure>\n<\/div>\nLast week, in a major departure from months of pro-lockdown messaging, Britain\u2019s envoy to the WHO Dr. David Nabarro\u00a0called for world leaders to stop locking down their countries<\/a>\u00a0and economies as a \u201cprimary method\u201d of controlling COVID19. \u201cI want to say it again: we in the World Health Organization do not advocate lockdowns as the primary means of control of this virus,\u201d\u00a0Dr. Nabarro told The Spectator<\/a>.<\/p>\n \u201cThe only time we believe a lockdown is justified is to buy you time to reorganise, regroup, rebalance your resources, protect your health workers who are exhausted, but by and large, we\u2019d rather not do it.\u201d Dr. Nabarro\u2019s position aligns with the\u00a0Great Barrington Declaration<\/a>, of which he spoke favorably, in which 30,000 scientists and public health experts have joined in advocating an immediate return to normal life for those at low risk. Nabarro and the thousands of signees of the Declaration opine that this approach will minimize overall mortality and lessen the disproportionate burden of lockdowns on the working class and underprivileged.<\/p>\n The day after Nabarro made his remarks, WHO director-general Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus flatly contradicted him, declaring that lifting lockdowns would be a recipe for \u201cunnecessary infections, suffering and death.\u201d Tedros claims that herd immunity can only be \u201csafely\u201d achieved through vaccination, a conclusion premised upon the frightening assumption that the development of a safe and effective vaccine is guaranteed, and the dubious premise that natural infections can be held back \u201cas long as it takes\u201d to prepare and distribute the vaccine. However, according to Tedros, there is no other way: \u201callowing a dangerous virus that we don\u2019t fully understand to run free is simply unethical. It\u2019s not an option.<\/a>\u201d<\/p>\n It\u2019s difficult to reconcile this stance with the data from states and nations which did not lock down for COVID19. For example, Swedish all-cause mortality is on average for 2020 \u2014 incredibly, the nation had\u00a0higher per-capita mortality just five years ago<\/a>, in a year in which there was no pandemic. This undeniable, easily-verifiable fact is shocking in light of the decimation of world economies on the premise of \u201cstopping\u201d a \u201chighly deadly\u201d pathogen. Far from \u201cunethical,\u201d allowing the virus to \u201crun free\u201d produced a much\u00a0better<\/strong>\u00a0result than tight lockdowns such as those imposed in\u00a0Argentina<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0Peru<\/a>\u00a0\u2014 yet Tedros is ignoring this. The question is: why?<\/p>\n In 2017,\u00a0Nabarro<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0Tedros<\/a>\u00a0competed for the WHO Director-General role. For the first time, the position was filled by a direct vote of the member-states, and not by the WHO executive board. Tedros\u2019s candidacy was mired in several scandals. Ethiopians and concerned global citizens pleaded with the countries voting in the election to\u00a0reject Tedros because he was a representative of a repressive political regime<\/a>\u00a0who had helped to build and maintain a\u00a0surveillance state with a total lack of government transparency<\/a>. Critics pointed out that Tedros was \u201ccomfortable with the secrecy of autocratic states<\/a>\u201d\u2014 a characteristic that could wreak havoc on the world if he assumed a position of power within the WHO.<\/p>\n Tedros also received criticism for his role in covering up cholera epidemics while he was Ethiopia\u2019s Health Minister from 2005 until 2012. Tedros summarily dismissed the complaint, raised by one of Nabarro\u2019s advisers, likening it to James B. Comey\u2019s reopening of the investigation into Hillary Clinton\u2019s private email server just days before the 2016 presidential election. He also attributed racial and elitist motives to his accuser, claiming \u201cDr. Nabarro\u2019s backers have a \u2018typical colonial mind-set aimed at winning at any cost and discrediting a candidate from a developing country.<\/a>\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n However, the undisputed facts depict a Health Minister who is doing one of two things: grossly neglecting cholera testing, or intentionally prioritizing his nation\u2019s economy over protecting people from cholera. Tedros claimed that outbreaks of what he called \u201cacute watery diarrhea\u201d in 2006, 2009, and 2011 were not cholera, although he could not produce a test ruling out the deadly pathogen, and neighboring Somalia and Kenya disclosed cholera as the cause of their own\u00a0simultaneous outbreaks<\/a>. Tedros claimed that testing in his country was \u201ctoo difficult,\u201d but this was belied by the fact that outside experts were able to test and find the cholera bacteria in\u00a0stool samples<\/a>. Testing for cholera bacteria is simple and\u00a0takes less than two days<\/a>. It is hard to fathom why outside experts and other countries would be able to test while the Ethiopian government could not.<\/p>\n Cholera can kill a person in as little as five hours. News of cholera outbreaks can have a quick and devastating impact on a country\u2019s economy, so African nations sometimes fail to declare cholera emergencies even when they know for a fact that they have one. During the 2006 outbreak, for example, Ethiopia \u201cdid not share the results of lab tests since [the outbreak started]\u201d because\u00a0\u201cit can mean some serious economic losses, especially in terms of international trade and tourism<\/a>,\u201d said Kebba O. Jaiteh, emergency officer in Ethiopia with the WHO.<\/p>\n During earlier outbreaks of cholera in Ethiopia (or \u201cacute watery diarrhea,\u201d depending on who you believe),\u00a0The Guardian<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0The Washington Post<\/a>\u00a0investigated and reported that Ethiopian officials\u00a0\u201cwere pressuring aid agencies to avoid using the word \u2018cholera\u2019 and not to report the number of people affected.\u201d<\/a>\u00a0Research by Human Rights Watch found that the Ethiopian government\u00a0\u201cwas pressuring its health workers to avoid any mention of cholera, which could damage the country\u2019s image and deter tourists.<\/a>\u201d Despite this accumulation of evidence, Tedros stood by his denial, preventing aid from being delivered to Ethiopia: the UN cannot act without permission and a declaration of an outbreak.<\/p>\n Vaccines are also unavailable when a country fails to declare a cholera outbreak, so Tedros refused his countrymen this option even when their neighbors in Somalia and Kenya received it. This seems to have escaped the notice of Dr. Seth Berkley, CEO of Gavi, the vaccine alliance, who praised Tedros\u2019s \u201ccommitment\u201d to human health and vaccination:\u00a0\u201cTedros\u2019s commitment to immunization is clear . . . His work with Gavi as Ethiopia\u2019s health minister helped boost the proportion of children reached by vaccines from less than half to more than two-thirds.<\/a>\u201d Other defenders of Tedros included former CDC director Tom Frieden, who was appointed by Barack Obama to head the Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry. Frieden praised Tedros as \u201can excellent choice to lead the WHO<\/a>,\u201d and today\u00a0vocally agrees with Tedros<\/a>\u00a0on lockdowns, masks, and social distancing.<\/p>\n Tedros\u2019s strongest and most important backer throughout these controversies was not an individual, but a government: China. As an opinion writer in the\u00a0Indian press<\/a>\u00a0described it, \u201cChina propped Tedros.\u201d American apathy in the public health arena had allowed China to \u201ccolonize\u201d global health:<\/p>\n \u201cOne reason that Tedros has gotten away with so much brazen cronyism is that America pays little to no attention to global public health, save pouring in money as a sugar daddy . . .\u00a0China started a scheme for global health colonisation and won because America didn\u2019t think it was important enough<\/strong>. The Chinese leveraged their investments across Africa to force the African Union to back Tedros, [and] also got Pakistan to withdraw its candidate who was opposing him, sources say . . . India\u2019s diplomatic credentials helped in covering up Tedros\u2019 shady past\u00a0and the fact his main backer was a Communist dictatorship<\/strong><\/a>.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Fast-forward to the COVID19 epidemic. In early 2020, Tedros went to great lengths to congratulate China on its response to the \u201cnovel coronavirus.\u201d On January 30, the WHO\u00a0issued a statement<\/a>\u00a0effusively praising China\u2019s response, highlighting the Chinese government\u2019s \u201ccommitment to transparency\u201d and efforts to \u201cinvestigate\u201d and \u201ccontain\u201d the outbreak. The statement declares that China\u2019s novel \u201clockdown\u201d strategy \u2014 wherein dictator Xi Jinping welded people inside their apartments in the name of \u201cdisease control\u201d \u2014 are \u201cgood not only for that country but also for the rest of the world.\u201d Tedros followed this up with a\u00a0tweet<\/a>: \u201cChina is actually setting a new standard for outbreak response.\u201d During this time period,\u00a0hundreds of thousands of social media posts later traced to China<\/a>\u00a0praised the lockdown, and criticized and ridiculed world leaders who failed to follow suit.<\/p>\n The WHO\u2019s resounding praise of China continued into February 2020, when it convened a \u201cGlobal Research and Innovation Forum<\/a>\u201d on the novel coronavirus to study \u201cthe origin of the virus, natural history, transmission, diagnosis, infection prevention and control,\u201d among other things.\u00a0On February 24, the group\u2019s Joint Mission held a press conference<\/a>\u00a0to report on its findings, during which it declared, \u201cthere is no question that China\u2019s bold approach to the rapid spread of this new respiratory pathogen has changed the course<\/strong>\u00a0of what was a rapidly-escalating and continues to be deadly epidemic.\u201d The stated basis for this unequivocal declaration on the effectiveness of lockdowns was as follows:<\/p>\n \u201cAnd there\u2019s a couple of other graphics . . . here\u2019s the outbreak that happened in the whole country on the bottom. Here\u2019s what the outbreak looked like outside of Hubei. Here are the areas of Hubei outside of Wuhan. And then the last one is Wuhan. And you can see this is a much flatter curve than the others. And\u00a0that\u2019s what happens when you have an aggressive action that changes the shape that you would expect from an infectious disease outbreak<\/strong>.<\/p>\n This is extremely important for China, but it\u2019s extremely important for the rest of the world, where this virus you\u2019ve seen in the last few days is taking advantage to explode in certain settings. And it wasn\u2019t easy because what I didn\u2019t mention on this slide is\u00a0every one of these lines represent a huge decision by policy makers and politicians in this country and leaders to actually change the shape with big measures such as, you know, the suspension of travel, the stay-at-home advisories, and other incredibly difficult measures<\/strong>; to make decisions about, but also to get a population to follow. And that\u2019s why, again, the role of the individual here in China is so important as well.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n The Joint Mission\u2019s conclusion that China\u2019s actions \u201cworked\u201d is a perfect depiction of the classic logical fallacy\u00a0post hoc, ergo propter hoc:\u00a0<\/em>Latin for \u201cit happened after, so it was caused by.\u201d While it is indeed possible that a \u201cmore flat\u201d curve in Wuhan could be attributed to government mandates, there are equal or greater possibilities: one, that testing protocols differed; two, that China simply witnessed the natural course of this \u201cnovel\u201d pathogen. The latter is particularly likely since there was no baseline with which to compare the proffered epicurves.<\/p>\n It should be obvious that the mere issuance of government mandates does not automatically mean they were effective \u2014 this is particularly true here, since\u00a0the global scientific community had previously considered and rejected large-scale quarantines as a method for controlling epidemics<\/a>. Respiratory viruses never spread evenly throughout countries, provinces, or states, so it was nothing short of reckless to conclude that the noted variance in spread \u2014 which again, could be nothing but a recording error due to testing aberrations \u2014 was due to anything but natural factors. It was criminal to summarily conclude on this evidence that the Chinese government\u2019s draconian actions led to a \u201cfavorable outcome,\u201d and then use that patentily illogical conclusion to sell lockdowns to the rest of the world. But that\u2019s just what the WHO did.<\/p>\n \u201cChina didn\u2019t approach this new virus with an old strategy for one disease or another disease. It developed its own approach to a new disease and extraordinarily\u00a0has turned around this disease<\/strong>\u00a0with strategies most of the world didn\u2019t think would work . . .\u00a0What China has demonstrated is, you have to do this. If you do it, you can save lives\u00a0<\/strong>and prevent thousands of cases of what is a very difficult disease.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n The Joint Mission repeated this assertion \u2014 \u201clockdowns work, they can and do save lives\u201d \u2014 in various ways throughout its press conference, recalling to mind the words of a famous propagandist named Joseph Goebbels: \u201crepeat a lie often enough and it becomes the truth.\u201d Research shows that this illusion of truth effect \u201cworks just as strongly for known as for unknown items, suggesting that prior knowledge won\u2019t prevent repetition from swaying our judgements of plausibility.<\/a>\u201d Our parents never heard of lockdown, and understood and accepted that humans sadly cannot \u201cstop\u201d a highly contagious infectious disease like the flu \u2014 even with a vaccine \u2014 yet suddenly most of the planet was behaving as if this were not only a reasonable mission, but something for which it was rational and desirable to sacrifice social lives, relationships, smiles, businesses, and educations in service of.<\/p>\n At the helm of the WHO, Tedros undoubtedly played a key role in the creation of this perception. Thanks to the many individual worldwide lockdown experiments, we now know that he was dead wrong: no lockdown was ever needed to \u201cflatten the curve\u201d \u2014 in fact, lockdowns\u00a0spiked<\/em>\u00a0the curve. No-lockdown Sweden\u2019s epicurve was much flatter than many areas with tight lockdowns, including New York City, Italy, and Spain. While this may be adequately explained by Hanlon\u2019s Razor, it is very interesting that the Joint Mission took great pains to protect China\u2019s trade and travel interests despite advocating simultaneous lockdowns for other nations:<\/p>\n \u201cAnd this brings us to what I think is one of the most important recommendations we would make in respect to getting China fully back on its feet after this crisis.\u00a0The world needs the experience and materials of China to be successful in battling this coronavirus disease<\/strong>. China has the most experience in the world with this disease, and it\u2019s the only country to have turned around serious large-scale outbreaks.\u00a0But if countries create barriers between themselves and China in terms of travel or trade, it is only going to compromise everyone\u2019s ability to get this done<\/strong>. And those kinds of measures need to be anything that goes beyond what\u2019s been recommended by the IHR committee, has got to be reassessed, because\u00a0the risk from China is dropping, and what China has to add to the global response is rapidly rising.<\/strong>\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n The human rights community did not share this enthusiasm for China, its draconian lockdown, or its offer to \u201chelp\u201d other nations contend with the virus. On February 2,\u00a0The Guardian<\/a>\u00a0published an opinion piece by a human rights advocate outlining the lockdown\u2019s serious human rights violations and opining that the WHO broke its own commitment to \u201chuman rights and health<\/a>\u201d by praising China. The WHO\u2019s commitment reads in part:<\/p>\n \u201cHuman rights are universal and inalienable. They apply equally, to all people, everywhere, without distinction. Human Rights standards \u2014 to food, health, education, to be free from torture, inhuman or degrading treatment \u2014 are also interrelated. The improvement of one right facilitates advancement of the others. Likewise, the deprivation of one right adversely affects the others\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n To protect these \u201cuniversal and inalienable\u201d human rights during a public health emergency,\u00a0international law requires that restrictions on human rights be based on legality, necessity, proportionality and grounded in evidence<\/a>. Similarly, the\u00a0Siracusa Principles<\/a>\u00a0\u2014 in which the United Nations outlines an overarching international covenant on civil and political rights \u2014 state that restrictions on rights and freedoms in the name of public health must be\u00a0strictly necessary\u00a0<\/strong>and the\u00a0least intrusive available<\/strong>\u00a0to reach their objective:<\/p>\n \u201cIn the exercise of his rights and freedoms, everyone shall be subject only to such limitations as are determined by law solely for the purpose of securing due recognition and respect for the rights and freedoms of others and of meeting the just requirements of morality, public order and the general welfare in a democratic society.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n \u201cLockdown\u201d goes far beyond these basic human rights boundaries. They are proven now to only damage societies \u2014 they even worsen COVID19 outcomes. When\u00a0The Economist<\/em>\u00a0analyzed<\/a>\u00a0all recorded epidemics since 1960, it concluded that \u201cdemocracies experience lower mortality rates for epidemic diseases than their non democratic counterparts.\u201d This finding holds true at all levels of income.<\/p>\n Tedros aligned himself not with democracies and their fundamental principles but with an autocratic dictatorship, the same dictatorship that helped him assume power within the WHO. Together, using logical fallacies and pseudo-science, they betrayed international law governing human rights, the WHO\u2019s own stated principles, and committed\u00a0crimes against humanity<\/a>\u00a0on a massive scale. Should we continue to listen to Tedros, or should we turn to Dr. Nabarro, another qualified expert who \u2014 like the thousands who signed the Great Barrington Declaration \u2014 urges a return to democratic norms as necessary to minimize human suffering?<\/p>\n \u201cLockdowns just have one consequence that you must never, ever belittle, and that is making poor people an awful lot poorer. Just look at what\u2019s happened to smallholder farmers all over the world. Look what\u2019s happening to poverty levels. It seems that we may well have a doubling of world poverty by next year.\u201d \u2014 Dr. David Nabarro<\/p><\/blockquote>\n It is no longer possible to ignore Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus\u2019s long history with suppressive autocratic regimes, including China. Whatever the motivation behind his advocacy for continued lockdowns, the data invalidates his position unequivocally. Lockdowns do not save lives \u2014 lockdowns kill. The reign of tyranny must end, immediately and forever, with a full restoration of the rights and privileges of each individual citizen to choose what level of risk he or she will accept as a law-abiding member of a functioning, democratic society.<\/p>\n WHO, what, where, and why? We don\u2019t yet have all of the answers, but we do know that the WHO director-general is on the wrong side of the lockdown debate.<\/p>\nThe China-Paved Path to WHO Director-General<\/h3>\n
\u201cI\u2019ve Got Your Back, and You\u2019ve Got Mine\u201d: Tedros Backs the Chinese COVID19 \u201cSupression\u201d Strategy<\/h3>\n