++BREAKING++: Liars To Convene In The Hague 12 Months Later Than Planned

Today saw an announcement from the World Health Organisation that their biennial anti-nicotine shitfest has been postponed by a year.

In light of the COVID-19 global pandemic and its impact on the conduct of international global conferences and travel, the Bureaus elected by COP8 and MOP1, after consulting the host country, have decided that convening the Ninth Session of the Conference of the Parties to the WHO FCTC (COP9) and the Second Session of the Meeting of the Parties to the Protocol to Eliminate Illicit Trade in Tobacco Products (MOP2), scheduled for November 2020, is no longer possible.

They have been moved back until November 2021 instead.

There is something quite fitting about a real public health emergency leading to postponement of a meeting full of pretend 'public health' tax-spongers who bleat about imaginary threats to the world when people are actually dying in real life instead of on cleverly-created computer models.

The WHO's Framework Convention on Tobacco Control had great plans for COP9 in the Hague. Increasingly irritated by the inconvenient propensity of safer nicotine delivery products, such as e-cigs, to decrease smoking rates all over the world - when loudly-hailed FCTC initiatives like plain packaging had done bugger all - they were all set to spout a load of junk science and lies to try to eliminate their far more successful competition.

If you want an idea of the utter donkey bollocks they were preparing to deliver, you just have to watch this from one of their most prominent officials. I could fisk it all but you might recognise the lies by yourself. There is basically not a single word of truth that slithers out of this WHO maggot's mouth.

Probably the most laughable claim he made was that vaping increases heart attacks. This was filmed at the end of February, by which time the joke study to which he relies on for his 'information' had been retracted due to including heart attacks that occurred before subjects had started vaping. It was widely reported in the popular and medical media, so you would imagine that a top-ranking WHO official might have noticed, but apparently this particular 'expert' was as blind to it as if someone had just told him there was a virus in China.

It's strange that they didn't just hold the thing virtually instead; that seems to be the way of other conferences. But, as has been pointed out on Twitter, that's not how the FCTC works.

They'd never switch to a virtual meeting for the same reason leadership in the US Congress doesn't want virtual votes -- it's a lot easier to twist arms, bully, and watch over people in person.

— Gregory Conley (@GregTHR) April 27, 2020

Indeed. Regular readers will know that the FCTC COP meetings are all held behind closed doors; the public and the press are excluded; deals are done in secret; delegates bullied and gaslighted; countries traded with incentives for repeating falsehoods; and junk science promoted over scientific fact. And that's not to mention the huge influence wielded by pharmaceutical sponsors and funders with conflicts of interests so huge they could swallow planets.

They won't put their conference online because it's not a transparent discussion or open debate, it is deliberately designed to be secret. Despite being funded by taxpayers, they have no wish to let taxpayers see what they are talking about. In 2014 in Moscow, they even turned off the WiFi so that delegates could not communicate with the outside world.

A $40,000 wifi facility was also wasted when tweets dried up on the second day, and Instagram accounts which had been sharing pictures went silent soon after. It seems that the WHO were desperate to ensure nothing escaped to the outside world about what they were discussing.

No, a virtual meeting would never do. They could have put controls in place to exclude people looking in - like they do physically at each COP they organise - and I'm sure they probably discussed it. But, I expect the potential for hacking was too great for them to consider and seeing as they are crap at just about everything else, they decided not to take the risk.

So, farewell then, COP9. We will see you in 2021 and will still be ready to counter your garbage. In fact, it gives us an opportunity. As we have seen recently with various political causes, the public is striking back against elite cabals ... and winning.

The WHO's COP jamborees feature up to 2,000 attendees, but vapers number in the tens of millions, and growing. Arguments are won by people who are infinitely more passionate about causes than their opponents. For the WHO, it's about money, for consumers it is far more personal than that.

We'll be ready for November 2021, slot it in your diary, folks. 

WHO Values Lines Of Text Over Saving Lives

So, it seems that the US has decided to stop funding the WHO.

For those of us who have been aware of how unaccountable and out of control they are for quite a while, it's not surprising that they have been found wanting when it comes to the only thing we all would like them to do very well.

Their failure to cope with epidemics is not just restricted to this one, who can ever forget the former incompetent Director General taking tea with Vladimir Putin at an anti-tobacco and vaping conference in Moscow instead of an event in Brussels to address Ebola killing people very quickly in Africa? She attended Moscow but texted her speech to Brussels.

The US has decided to implement a review because the WHO's handling of the Coronavirus has been an absolute disgrace. Being a highly-professional organisation, the WHO has obviously reacted to this by focussing on what really matters to them in these extraordinary times.

Via The Times.

The World Health Organisation has warned governments about engaging with the tobacco industry over the development of coronavirus vaccines. 

British American Tobacco, whose cigarette brands include Lucky Stripe and Dunhill, said this month that it had made a significant breakthrough in developing a potential plant-based vaccine candidate for Covid-19. 

However, vaccines from Big Tobacco would pose a dilemma for public health officials and governments. Under the WHO’s framework convention on tobacco control, members are restricted in dealing with the industry.

A vaccine to save millions of lives would be a "dilemma" to the WHO? Are you fucking having a laugh? 

The global health body said that “partnership with the tobacco industry undermines governments’ credibility in protecting population health as there is ‘a fundamental and irreconcilable conflict between the tobacco industry’s interests and public health policy interests’.”

Erm, so an industry producing a vaccine is bad because it goes against "public health policy interests"? This must be the biggest "computer says no" statement of all time.

People are dying, but hey, who cares? The WHO has a bit of text and it simply cannot be disregarded. Apparently. 

It's called Article 5.3 and it absolutely doesn't fucking cover this. Not even close! 

In setting and implementing their public health policies with respect to tobacco control, Parties shall act to protect these policies from commercial and other vested interests of the tobacco industry in accordance with national law.

Do you see anything in there about refusing a vaccine which could save millions of lives? 

It said that countries including Britain that had ratified the framework in 2004 “should take steps to prevent any interference by the tobacco industry . . . The key point for addressing tobacco industry interference is to reject partnerships and non-binding or non-enforceable agreements with the tobacco industry at any times.”

In other words, the WHO would dearly love someone to come up with a vaccine to prevent deaths caused by their catastrophic incompetence, but sadly if it comes from a company they don't like, everyone will have to refuse it. Computer says no. 

The London-listed BAT, which generated profits of £9 billion last year, has joined the race to develop a vaccine that involves companies worldwide. Its vaccine is being developed with Kentucky Bio Processing, its American biotechnology subsidiary. It said this month that it was in pre-clinical testing and wanted to form partnerships with government agencies on the non-profit project to help to bring its vaccine to human trials, possibly by next month.

Evil bastards!

David O’Reilly, director of scientific research at BAT, has said that the company has contacted healthcare departments to offer access to its research and planned to contact the WHO. 

The government, which has established a vaccine taskforce including industry and academics, is in contact with the tobacco company and other coronavirus vaccine ventures. 

If testing “goes well”, through collaborations with government and third-party manufacturers between one and three million doses per week could be manufactured from June, the company said. Clinical studies typically take more than a year. 

Dr O’Reilly said that history would take a dim view if the company had not told anybody that it had technology that could be deployed rapidly to help to tackle a pandemic.

Well, quite. I don't know about you, but as someone who would like to go out sometime before next Christmas, actually see flour on supermarket shelves again - maybe even visit a pub - and not see escalating deaths all over the world due to the WHO's stunning stupidity, I really couldn't give a rat's chuff who makes a vaccine. I don't think tens of thousands of bereaved families in the UK or elsewhere will care either. 

Deborah Arnott, chief executive Action on Smoking and Health, an anti-smoking charity, said: “The Covid-19 pandemic is a disaster, there have been over 40,000 deaths since it started and rising — but we mustn’t forget that the tobacco epidemic still kills over 22,000 people a day.”

40,000? Try 160,000 and rising.

But besides that, so therefore we should tell BAT to stop working on a cure? Put away your test tubes, guys, close down the labs and your expensive machines, tobacco control has got this. They're putting health warnings on individual cigarettes soon, that'll learn the virus, and no mistake!

Seriously, some of these people should learn to keep their heads down and shut their traps right now. This isn't a fucking game.

Now, it's clear that WHO are puppet masters of people further down the chain, so they kinda have to dance to the WHO's tune. I'm sure they wouldn't be such disgusting people if that burden was taken away from them.

So for the good of humanity, and to help our UK tobacco controllers to not have to act as heartless oafs, it's probably for the best that the UK government stops funding the WHO too.

It might - just might - force them into working out for themselves that an organisation which claims to be a force for good health around the world, should value people staying alive when faced with a deadly virus which kills in days, more than childish ideology and a few sentences of fucking text.

We're All In This Together ... Except For Some

This week, the Secretary of State for Health, Matt Hancock, asked for further help from industry to develop testing for the Coronavirus outbreak. He namechecked a few Titans of industry in his daily briefing which had already downed their usual tools and decided that their talents, and financial clout, could be useful to society in saving lives.

The week before, Hancock had acknowledged the already admirable efforts that the private sector had put in to redirect their ample resources towards tackling the virus, saying:

Many companies are already working urgently to assist us in this and I'm delighted that so many more are looking to step up to this challenge.

It's all hands to the pump and we are all together on this, aren't we? It is so refreshing to see; everyone pulling together in a common cause against a common enemy.

Well, not quite everyone, unfortunately.

On the same day that Hancock said he was "delighted" at the efforts being made, there was one subset of our society which was still excluding themselves from this campaign of working together. You see, British American Tobacco (BAT) had issued a press release - on the very same day - announcing that they were working hard on producing a vaccine. You can read it here.

You would think, wouldn't you, that those in tobacco control would meet to discuss this and decide that now isn't the time to broadcast their childish and insular prejudices to the world. But, I dunno, maybe because communication lines are difficult working for home (I'm being generous) that didn't happen.

Instead, there was a wail of collective outrage from the tobacco control industry, the most vomit-inducing from Wanda de Kanter, a particularly nasty anti-smoking lunatic from The Netherlands.

Yep, in a global emergency, companies she doesn't like should be told to "stop" using their huge resources in an effort to save lives. This, from someone who would call herself part of 'public health'. Note she is not saying that she, particularly, would refuse anything provided by the 'wrong' company if she was on death's door - which is her choice - but that other people who are dying should be prevented from accessing the equipment and that work on a vaccine should cease because she says so.

Considering over 100,000 human beings have died so far, this evil attitude truly beggars belief!

The reference to ventilators is a reaction to a different story broken by The Bureau of Investigative Journalism - an organisation which claims to be the pinnacle of truth in reporting, but currently writes articles to order funded by Michael Bloomberg's puppet, Vital Strategies - about 50 ventilators donated by Philip Morris in Greece.

No-one would have known this story if it wasn't highlighted by the grubby guns for hire of the journalism trade but, sadly, someone far less of a lunatic - and who should know better - chose to chivvy them along by offering this disappointing comment.

Deborah Arnott, chief executive of Action on Smoking and Health, criticised PMI’s motives. “This is a shameful publicity stunt by Philip Morris International, which owns Papastratos and has a 40% share of the Greek tobacco market,” she said. 

“Smoking makes people more vulnerable to coronavirus, and if they get it makes the symptoms worse, meaning they’re more likely to need ventilators. Papastratos makes €1.3bn a year ... In comparison, the donation of 50 ventilators is a drop in the ocean.”

The fact that Papastratos - an affiliate of Philip Morris - had not courted any publicity whatsoever until the Bureau of Incompetent Journalism blundered in, seems lost on some, obviously.

As if that is not bad enough on its own, shall we test this assertion that "smoking makes people more vulnerable to coronavirus"?

Because, you see, it's not true.

Smokers are conspicuously under-represented amongst cases in both China and the USA. An evidence review published three weeks ago found no association between smoking and the severity of COVID-19. Yet every tobacco control organisation - including Public Health England - in the UK has been spewing this fake news from their social media channels for a couple of weeks now.

So, one could argue that the only people using this virus as a publicity stunt are tobacco controllers themselves. Pretty shameful, huh?

In fact, it's worse than that. While we are all working together to defeat the virus, the tobacco control machine is actively trying to nobble any efforts to join with the noble cause as Hancock has been suggesting.

Another Bloomberg-funded sock puppet made a desperate plea a few days ago for governments to refuse help from not only tobacco companies but vaping ones too. Repeating the lies about smoking and vaping leading to increased risks from the virus, they urged governments to "encourage citizens to quit outright and to hold the tobacco industry accountable for the harm caused by its products, including harm related to COVID-19".

Now, I've always had quite a distaste for extremists in tobacco control. They are devoid of empathy, they pervert scientific principles, treat ethics as if they were an inconvenience and are incredibly venal and selfish.

But, I honestly never believed they could be so monumentally crass as to put their own funding and personal dislikes over and above the greater cause of helping as many people to live as possible.

Maybe I'm being unfair and - just as happened when the WHO installed the butcher of Zimbabwe as a goodwill ambassador, remember that? - there are many others in the tobacco control industry who are disgusted by such a cold, heartless and inhumane reaction to companies trying to help lessen the number of people dying during this real public health emergency, but if so they are extremely quiet about it.

If, at some point, BAT did create a vaccine for the virus, I do hope the massed ranks of selfish and blinkered tobacco controllers who find the manufacturer distasteful will refuse to take it. They would be astonishing hypocrites otherwise, and by declining they would leave more supplies for those in the public who value life above stupid and childish ideology.

You may have read often on these pages that I don't believe certain sections of pretend 'public health' actually care about health at all. Well, I think this is case closed, don't you?