By Dr. DAVID BELL

In four days' time, on Wednesday September 20th, our representatives meeting at the United Nations will sign off on a 'Declaration' titled: 'Political Declaration of the United Nations General Assembly High-level Meeting on Pandemic Prevention, Preparedness and Response.'

This was announced as a "silent procedure", meaning that States not responding will be deemed supporters of the text. The document expresses a new policy pathway for managing populations when the World Health Organisation (WHO), the health arm of the UN, declares a future viral variant to be a "public health emergency of international concern". The WHO noted in 2019 that pandemics are rare and insignificant in terms of overall mortality over the last century. Since then, it decided that the 2019 old-normal population was simply oblivious to impending annihilation. The WHO and the entire UN system now consider pandemics an existential and imminent threat. This matters, because:

They are asking for far more money than is spent on any other international health program (your money);

This will deliver great wealth to some people who now work closely with WHO and the UN;

The powers being sought from your Government will reimpose the very responses that have just caused the largest growth in poverty and disease in our lifetimes; and

Logically, pandemics will only become more frequent if someone intends to make them so (so we should wonder what is going on).

Staff who drafted this Declaration did so because it is their job. They were paid to write a text that is clearly contradictory, sometimes fallacious, and often quite meaningless. They are part of a rapidly growing industry, and the Declaration is intended to justify this growth and the centralisation of power that goes with it. The document will almost certainly be agreed by our Governments because, frankly, this is where the momentum and money are.