Sunday 19 April 2020

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.



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