The WHO doesn’t mess around. At least when it comes to spreading propaganda.

I will assume for the sake of civility that the WHO genuinely believes that the COVID vaccine is safe and effective. I will even assume that for most people the vaccine is safe, and at least somewhat effective in reducing the likelihood of severe disease in people likely to become deadly ill from COVID, such as the very old and very sick.

But I will not concede that critics of the vaccine are spreading misinformation nor stoking unreasonable fears. Quite a few sober scientists and even the health officials of many OECD countries have expressed real and reasonable skepticism that the risk profile for the vaccine doesn’t make vast swathes of the population bad candidates for getting the jab. Many countries are not even offering the vaccine to most of their population because the risk isn’t worth the reward.

The WHO has decided to label all these people a “major killing force” in the world and anti-science. And they have enlisted one of the most crazed vaccine fanatics to spread the message in a video that infantilizes people and spreads misinformation.

“Anti-vaccine activism, which I actually call anti-science aggression, has now become a major killing force globally."
– @PeterHotez, Professor and Dean @BCM_TropMed, on the devastating impact of #misinformation and disinformation. pic.twitter.com/ZluiMGJ2gX

— World Health Organization (WHO) (@WHO) December 14, 2022

Denmark, for instance, stopped vaccinating people who are at low risk below 50 years old. Mounting evidence of vaccine injuries, the clear evidence that the vaccine doesn’t slow or stop the spread of the virus, and clear evidence that for many people the risks from getting the vaccine outweigh the benefits dictated their choice.

Denmark is not anti-vaccine or anti-science. They are just making a scientific risk assessment. People can die from the vaccine, suffer permanent injuries, and the long-term effects are obviously still unknown. If a person is at little risk from the virus, why expose them to a different unnecessary risk?

Yet both our own government and the WHO is insulting our intelligence and slandering skeptics of the efficacy of the vaccine. Worse, these are the people who have consistently lied about what vaccines can and cannot do. They have misled the public again and again, leading their slander and ad hominem attacks to be louder and shriller.

The WHO has been a bad actor throughout the COVID pandemic. They collaborated with the Chinese government in covering up the origins of the virus, and then reversed course for some reason and now keep on attacking China for covering things up. I am sympathetic to the latter, but that calls into question why they initially sided with China.

Back in 2020 The New York Times did a story on the WHO’s helping China’s coverup, and it was a barnburner of a story. Complete with documents showing that the WHO was praising China when it knew that a coverup was in full swing.

“If we don’t know the source then we’re equally vulnerable in the future to a similar outbreak,” Michael Ryan, the World Health Organization’s emergency director, had said that week in Geneva. “Understanding that source is a very important next step.”

What the team members did not know was that they would not be allowed to investigate the source at all. Despite Dr. Ryan’s pronouncements, and over the advice of its emergency committee, the organization’s leadership had quietly negotiated terms that sidelined its own experts. They would not question China’s initial response or even visit the live-animal market in the city of Wuhan where the outbreak seemed to have originated.

These are the people attacking us for being skeptical of their pronouncements.

Nine months and more than 1.1 million deaths later, there is still no transparent, independent investigation into the source of the virus. Notoriously allergic to outside scrutiny, China has impeded the effort, while leaders of the World Health Organization, if privately frustrated, have largely ceded control, even as the Trump administration has fumed.

From the earliest days of the outbreak, the World Health Organization — the only public health body with a global remit — has been both indispensable and impotent. The Geneva-based agency has delivered key information about testing, treatment and vaccine science. When the Trump administration decided to develop its own test kits, rather than rely on the W.H.O. blueprint, the botched result led to delays.

At the same time, the health organization pushed misleading and contradictory information about the risk of spread from symptomless carriers. Its experts were slow to accept that the virus could be airborne. Top health officials encouraged travel as usual, advice that was based on politics and economics, not science.

Just who spread misinformation and has been a “major killing force worldwide?” The only health agency that is tasked with keeping the world safe from viruses.

The least they could do is shut the hell up and hope we forget how many people they have helped kill.

But no, these people are shameless. They are murderous in their disregard for the well-being of others, and still try to not only lecture, but insult us if we dissent from taking their lies at face value.

The W.H.O.’s staunchest defenders note that, by the nature of its constitution, it is beholden to the countries that finance it. And it is hardly the only international body bending to China’s might. But even many of its supporters have been frustrated by the organization’s secrecy, its public praise for China and its quiet concessions. Those decisions have indirectly helped Beijing to whitewash its early failures in handling the outbreak.

If the WHO is beholden to its funders, then who is funding this attack on people who are rightly skeptical of the stream of contradictory, confusing, and often misleading pronouncements from the organization?

That is the question we should be asking. Who is paying them to put out this smear campaign? I suspect it isn’t the countries which have pulled back from following their recommendations. They, too are being slandered by implication.

The WHO, as with all our institutions these days, has been discredited. Most people haven’t yet come to the conclusion that their intentions are bad–I am led there by the evidence, but I can see why people may have yet to lose their faith in humanity–but I think it is fair to say that by now people are skeptical of their competence and the quality of their advice.

One thing we do know is that Biden reversed Trump’s decision to withdraw from the WHO, and that this was a terrible mistake. In principle the idea of a worldwide health agency makes sense. We all live in the same world and all can get sick from viruses that travel.

But the WHO is fatally compromised. As with every major institution around these days, it needs to be replaced.