90 Miles From Tyranny

Tuesday, May 31, 2022

The World Health Organization has lost all credibility

Let’s be honest: is there anyone out there who has faith in the ability of the World Health Organization (WHO) to tackle a future pandemic? Any lingering hope that the WHO might be an organization fit to be trusted with global heath concerns has pretty well evaporated with the election, by acclamation, of China as one of the 12 members of its executive board on Friday.

It is true, of course, that an international body must have representation from all over the world if it is going to win the near-universal cooperation it needs in order to operate. It can’t be led entirely by western democracies and wealthy South Asian countries even if they might have the best skills available; you need members able to tap into every culture and religion on Earth. But ought we really be trusting leadership of the WHO to a government which is not merely a malignant dictatorship, accused of human rights abuses against its own citizens – but which has also obstructed an investigation into the high likelihood that it accidentally caused the last pandemic?

The story of how Covid-19 began has been investigated very thoroughly in Alina Chan and Matt Ridley’s excellent book, Viral: the Search for the Origin of Covid-19. If no one has quite pegged down where the virus came from – and probably never will – there is at least a very strong case to answer that it originated in Chinese laboratory experiments aimed at researching how to tackle coronaviruses, and that it entered the population through a laboratory leak. It would hardly be unprecedented for a virus to leak from a laboratory in this way – even if it would make it way and above the world’s most expensive laboratory accident.

What has been China’s response to this possibility? To try to snuff out any investigation into the matter. Bizarrely, a WHO team allowed into China in early 2021, and chaperoned at every turn, tried to dismiss a lab leak, announcing that it would not investigate the matter any further.

It isn’t just China whose presence on the WHO Executive Board will cause alarm. Also on the list is Brazil, whose own parliament has recommended criminal charges against the country’s president, Jair Bolsonaro, over his handling of the pandemic. Then there is Yemen, which is in the grip of civil war. The only European country on the WHO’s board is Slovakia, which hardly has the greatest political clout and which happens to have had one of the highest deaths rates from Covid-19 anywhere.

If I were drawing up a list of 12 countries for the WHO’s executive board, based on their record during the pandemic, their ability to provide global leadership and on their longer record in public health, their political stability (while ensuring geographical spread), these are the ones which would make my fantasy WHO executive board:

Germany
The UK or France
Norway, Denmark or Sweden
The US
Canada
Japan
South Korea
Vietnam
South Africa (for its excellent sequencing of variants)
Senegal (has been praised for handling pandemic far better than other poor countries)
Australia or New Zealand
Chile

Instead, this is the WHO’s list:

Brazil
Canada
China
Ethiopia
Maldives
Micronesia
Morocco
Moldova
Senegal
Slovakia
USA
Yemen

In other words, America and Canada apart, it is stuffed with small countries, many with lousy human rights records, which will not dare to challenge China or which will not have the political clout to do so. The prospects for future pandemics do not look good...

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The head of Facebook's fake science fact check group, Science Feedback, is 'hiding in Paris, terrified of appearing in court'

Emmanuel Vincent, President of Science Feedback

The following is an excerpt from The DisInformation Chronicle by Paul D. Thacker.

Emmanuel Vincent is a hunted man.

On June 24, an officer of the French Ministry of the Interior, acting under the terms of the Hague Convention, summoned him to a police station and served him papers to appear in court for posting false and misleading statements in his role as president of Science Feedback, a Facebook fact checking service.

On top of this, the beleaguered nonprofit has weathered multiple critiques for posting politicized, biased opinions that call themselves “fact checks”—including a Wall Street Journal editorial that called out Science Feedback for attacking Johns Hopkins physician-researcher Marty Makary, after he wrote an essay predicting the arrival of Covid-19 herd immunity.

“This is counter-opinion masquerading as fact checking,” the Wall Street Journal wrote, noting that Dr. Makary never made a factual claim; he had made a prediction based on his analysis of available evidence.

If you’re interested in falling down a science rabbit hole, feel free to read what Dr. Makary wrote and how Science Feedback responded. But here’s the thing, you don’t need a PhD in epidemiology to understand that when experts analyze studies and make predictions they might be wrong.

Man on the run

Back in August of 2020, Vincent was first served a legal complaint at the address for Science Feedback, at 40 Rue Alexandre Dumas, 75011, Paris, France. He was then served at a second address in Paris, 16, rue Cecile Furtado Heine.

By September 2020, a French legal agent learned that Vincent had registered Science Feedback at a different address in Paris.

He then called Mr. Vincent on his cell phone and delivered him the documents at a completely new address. (I think we’re now at four addresses) Vincent confirmed to the legal agent that he had already received the documents at one of the addresses, and then refused to sign a receipt.

The court documents were then translated into French, and sent to various addresses for Vincent and Science Feedback. Vincent was then sent certified translations of other legal proceedings against him, and by July of last year, the French Ministry of Justice attested that Vincent was served the documents under the Hague Convention.

According to a certified translation of the French Ministry documents, Ms. Marie Fonquerne, a judicial police officer, requested that Mr. Vincent appear at a police prefecture where he confirmed that he is president of Science Feedback. Vincent then agreed to accept correspondence at an email for Science Feedback, but then gave this weird explanation for why he could not accept the documents:

[I]t is the company SCIIVERIFY that works in partnership with FACEBOOK and not the association SCIENCE FEEDBACK. SCIVERIFY is a subsidiary of SCIENCE FEEDBACK and is located at 40 Rue Alexandre Dumas 75011 PARIS and it is who must be assigned, -- I refuse to accept the act which is not addressed to the right entity.

Emmanuel Vincent

Vincent’s absurdist game of hide and seek has thus far cost over $17,000—as it required the hiring of French legal agents to personally hand-deliver him documents which he refused to sign, and the pursuit of service under the Hague Convention, in which he was summoned to a police station and once again refused to...

“I truly believe that a child cannot consent to being on a diet the same way a child cannot consent to having sex,” Sonalee Rashatwar, whose Instagram username is "The Fat Sex Therapist," proclaimed Thursday from the main stage of St. Olaf College.

She continued, “I experience diet culture as a form of assault because it impacts the way that I experience my body.”

These comments and more were made in the context of her two-hour speech, sponsored by St. Olaf College’s Wellness Center, Women's and Gender Studies Department, and Center for Equity and Inclusion, on the topic of “radical fat liberation.” The talk included assertions that fitness contributed to the recent Christchurch shooting, that people should "challenge" the rule of law, as well as the authority of and the police.

“Tonight we're gonna start by talking about how to politicize our definition of body image,” Rashatwar began, “because oftentimes we actually get stuck thinking of it from a white supremacist lense.” She explained how “white supremacy happens every day in all these little little things.”

During the course of her talk, Rashatwar listed science as one of these supposedly white supremacist everyday things.

“We should be critical of the use of science and the production of knowledge to continue promoting this idea that certain bodies are fit, able, and desirable...is it my fatness that causes my high blood pressure, or is it my experience of weight stigma?" Rashatwar asked. She then connected the science suggesting that obesity is unhealthy to Nazism, saying that "fatphobic" science is “often actually eugenic science....eugenic science is Nazi science.”

However, she then pivoted to support scientific findings as she pondered “intentionally pursuing weight loss,” claiming that “what we’re discovering scientifically is that that’s not possible.”

After addressing the topic of science and making her claim that there is no connection between high blood pressure and obesity, Rashatwar turned to discuss political philosophy and policy.

“This conversation about pushing off our own wellbeing onto the individual is part of these 1980s Reagan era policies that again try to move that structural obligation of a system and this social safety net onto the individual," Rashatwar said, "instead of thinking that there should be social supports that also help me to subsidize my food costs."

Her solution to these problems of society requiring individual responsibility was calling students “to challenge all authorities, not just the authority that science has given but also legal authority...the same way I want us all to challenge laws, I want us all to challenge prisons and policing.”

Rashatwar specified how she personally enacts these ideas in her life as a sexual trauma therapist. She said that in her professional role, her code of ethics dictates an absolute prohibition on physical contact with clients. However, Rashatwar claimed that “I will never live by a professional code of ethics that tells me what I am allowed and not allowed to do with my body.

Finally, Rashatwar took a crack at recent events, particularly the Christchurch massacre in New Zealand.

“I do not think it’s surprising that the man who shot up Christchurch, New Zealand was also a fitness instructor," Rashatwar said. After making this claim, she added that the shooting is “a clear communication that there’s still an idealized body. Nazis really love this idea of an idealized body, and so it makes a lot of sense to me that a fitness instructor...might also think about an idealized body in this thin white supremacist way.”

After the lecture, Campus Reform spoke with Will Douty, a freshman St. Olaf student in attendance, who has lost over 100 pounds during his own personal health journey.

“The entire speech was very troubling to me,” Douty said. “I know from personal experience that health is absolutely connected with...