Monkey Business

Posted On 01/06/2022

Expressis-Verbis would like to thank Paul Schreyer for allowing us to share this article, first published on his Multipolar pages, with our Luxembourgish readership. As a thank you, it will, as usual, be translated by Expressis-Verbis and made available for its further use.

The Expressis-Verbis Team

Bill Gates publishes a new book on pandemic control—calling for more centralized control. The G7 health ministers support corresponding proposals by the US government, and in parallel take part in an exercise for a unified response to a new type of pox pandemic. At the same time, real outbreaks of monkeypox are reported in many countries, suggesting an urgent need for action. All of this is happening in May 2022, shortly before the WHO annual meeting is due to discuss a tightening of the “International Health Regulations”, which is also about increased central control.

In a book released in early May 2022, Bill Gates lays out his ideas on pandemic response. He calls for an international rapid response team of 3,000 people to detect new dangerous pathogens and subsequently guide the governments’ response to the identified threat. The billionaire expects the team to cost $1 billion a year. The governments will bear the cost but will have little say in the matter, since, according to Gates, the team will be coordinated by the WHO—the organization that Gates himself plays a major role in steering. His foundation is currently the second-largest donor.

Gates already has a name for this team: GERM (Global Epidemic Response and Mobilisation Team). A play on words? The billionaire imagines it like this:

Here’s how a GERM response would work: The team’s disease monitoring experts would look for potential outbreaks. Once identified, GERM should have the ability to declare an outbreak and work with national governments and the World Bank to raise money for the response very quickly. Product-development experts would advise governments and companies on the highest-priority drugs and vaccines. People who understand computer modeling would coordinate the work of modelers around the world. And the team would help create and coordinate responses, such as how and when to implement border closures and recommend mask use.”

An international organization indirectly dependent on Gates is thus to be allowed to co-decide on measures such as lockdowns in individual countries. The German Daily Die WELT notes:

“Democratic institutions do not feature in Gates’ plan, the word ‘parliament’ appears a single time, in a footnote, in the whole book […] For Gates, these are all just organisational and technical issues that can be administered and implemented by experts.”

Perfect Timing

On 3 May, Gates’ 300-page book was published simultaneously in English, German, French and Italian. Non-fiction books of this kind usually have a lead time of at least a year, from the idea and contract negotiations with the publisher, through research, writing, editing and production, to planning the marketing campaign. This is significant insofar as the publication date of the book fits in with the upcoming consultations on the tightening of the “International Health Regulations”. These deliberations will take place from 22 to 28 May at the annual meeting of the WHO in Geneva, where the issue at hand is essentially the same as in Gates’ book: stronger central control of pandemic measures while at the same time weakening national sovereignty.

Silvia Behrendt, former legal advisor to the Secretariat for International Health Regulations (IHR) at WHO, explains:

“The amendments proposed by the US to Article 12 of the IHR will, on the one hand, significantly expand the executive powers of the WHO Director-General to declare global emergency-like situations and, on the other hand, further centralize this power by removing the need for consultation and agreement with the respective State Party. […] By deleting the phrase ‘at the request of the State Party’ and replacing ‘may’ with ‘shall’, the assistance offered by WHO to a State in responding to public health risks becomes the norm. If a state does not accept such an offer of assistance within two days, it must justify this to all other WHO member states by setting out the ‘public health reasons for refusal’, which can have far-reaching economic and financial consequences for the refusing state.”

The tightening of the International Health Regulations is closely linked to the negotiations on an international pandemic treaty, the creation of which was first publicly proposed in March 2021. Here, 26 heads of state and government as well as the Presidents of the European Council and the Director-General of the WHO had formulated a joint appeal at that time, which stated:

“[W]e believe that nations should work together towards a new international treaty for pandemic preparedness and response. Such a renewed collective commitment would be a milestone in stepping up pandemic preparedness at the highest political level. It would be rooted in the constitution of the World Health Organization, drawing in other relevant organizations key to this endeavour, in support of the principle of health for all. Existing global health instruments, especially the International Health Regulations, would underpin such a treaty, ensuring a firm and tested foundation on which we can build and improve.”

The US government had initially remained in the background and was not among the signatories of the call. However, the WHO deliberations now taking place at the end of May 2022 to tighten the International Health Regulations—including the weakening of national sovereignty in the event of a pandemic—were launched by the USA.

Meanwhile, the topic is hardly mentioned in the media. One exception is an article in last week’s issue of Die WELT, in which the authors criticize the lack of political discussion of these plans:

“There has been no public debate on this issue. So far, the Health Committee of the Bundestag, the Foreign Affairs Committee and the Subcommittee on Global Health have all failed to address the topic of the vote. Members of various parliamentary groups with whom WELT AM SONNTAG spoke were quite clueless, merely emphasizing the need for change. More virus surveillance, more coordination.”

“Overall objective”

Immediately before the WHO deliberations, the G7 health ministers met in Berlin on 19 and 20 May. The final communiqué of the meeting states, rather obscurely and cloaked in technocratic language:

“We reiterate our support of the decision of the World Health Assembly Special Session in 2021 (SSA2(5)) to establish an intergovernmental negotiating body (INB) to draft and negotiate a WHO convention, agreement or other international instrument on pandemic prevention, preparedness and response with a view to adopt under Article 19, or under other provisions of the WHO Constitution as may be deemed appropriate by the INB. We commit to supporting this global process to achieve its overall objective. In addition, we recognise the value of the IHR as a legal framework for global health security. In particular, the IHR underscores the role that country-level preparedness and response capacities can have in the world’s ability to effectively respond to health emergencies that transcend borders. We therefore support strengthening the IHR through targeted amendments in an inclusive process as recommended by the report of the Working Group on Strengthening WHO Preparedness and Response to Health Emergencies (WGPR) to be considered at the 75th WHA” [the World Health Assembly, which is currently underway].

There is also a problem of legitimacy in implementing such far-reaching and unprecedented measures, which amount to synchronized policies across all countries and supposedly independent experts calling the shots: Covid is “over”, the number of cases and deaths hardly seems threatening, it is spring, the world is “breathing a sigh of relief”, and restrictions are loosened everywhere. It is hardly possible to bring up the idea of further tightening and centralizing control. In this situation, a new, threatening virus is now appearing simultaneously in several countries of the West. Under these circumstances, a pandemic treaty and tightened intervention rights of the WHO again seem more plausible, especially if the new crisis were to become more acute.

Monkey pox appearance

The new virus started on 7 May, four days after Gates’ book was published and two weeks before the start of the WHO consultations. The WHO reported:

“On 7 May 2022, WHO was informed of a confirmed case of monkeypox in an individual who travelled from the United Kingdom to Nigeria and subsequently returned to the United Kingdom. […] As of 11 May, extensive contact tracing has been undertaken to identify exposed contacts in healthcare settings, the community and the international flight. These individuals are being followed up for 21 days from the date of last exposure with the case. None has reported compatible symptoms so far. Since the case was immediately isolated and contact tracing was performed, the risk of onward transmission related to this case in the United Kingdom is minimal. However, as the source of infection in Nigeria is not known, there remains a risk of ongoing transmission in this country.”

In Germany, on 20 May, Bayerischer Rundfunk quoted medical doctor Norbert Brockmeyer as saying “that we have a huge population in Germany that has not been vaccinated against smallpox—especially in the sexually active age group”, which is why the potential for infections is much greater than 20 years ago. Smallpox vaccination might therefore have to be considered. On the same day, the first monkeypox case was reported in Germany. The transmission remained mysterious, as reported by Deutsche Welle:

“The health authorities are puzzling over how the virus was transmitted. […] In the first case, which occurred about a fortnight ago, the British health authorities were able to trace the origin easily because the patient had apparently brought the rare virus with him from a trip to Nigeria. The tracing of four more recent cases is much more difficult because the men affected had not previously travelled to Africa and had not been in contact with the other cases. Health authorities are now intensively searching for the mysterious links between the cases, as monkeypox viruses are not particularly easily transmitted.”

Clairvoyant pandemic exercises

On 19 May, the G7 health ministers also carried out a “leopard pox” outbreak exercise. Karl Lauterbach noted that WHO and RKI had been “preparing this exercise scenario for months”.

In this context, it is worth recalling the international pandemic exercise “Atlantic Storm” in 2005, which played out as follows:

“An informal group of international leaders was scheduled to meet in Washington, DC, on January 14, 2005, for a “Transatlantic Security Summit” on international cooperation in preparing for and responding to WMD terrorism. On the eve of the summit, it became apparent that people from several European countries were infected with smallpox. Before returning to their home nations to manage the crisis, the assembled leaders agreed to convene an emergency meeting to address the steps that the transatlantic community could take to respond to the crisis. The exercise was designed to run in real time in the real world of January 14, 2005. […] Method of Smallpox Attacks: […] Seed stocks of Variola major virus (the causative agent of smallpox) were obtained by Al-Jihad Al-Jadid from a bioweapons facility in the former Soviet Union. The Al-Jihad Al-Jadid scientists received microbiological training at Indian and U.S. universities. […] The attacks were carried out by vaccinated terrorists who walked throughout the target locations for several hours during periods of peak occupancy. A commercially available dry powder dispenser the size of a small fire extinguisher hidden in a backpack was used to disseminate the agent.”

Over the past 25 years, smallpox has been a recurring idea for the scriptwriters of pandemic exercises. As early as spring 1998, 40 representatives of various US authorities met in Washington and acted out a scenario according to which terrorists in California had spread a modified smallpox virus for which there were no treatment options. In another exercise in 1999, according to the script, unspecified terrorists attacked an American city with smallpox virus. The seven-page plan foresaw in great detail how the crisis would unfold over a two-month period. The “Dark Winter” exercise in June 2001 again involved a smallpox attack. Even then, the final report asked whether legislation might be needed to “ban dangerous information” as “misinformation” about the smallpox outbreak would appear on the internet.

Then in 2017, Bill Gates warned at the Munich Security Conference:

“[T]he next epidemic could originate on the computer screen of a terrorist intent on using genetic engineering to create a synthetic version of the smallpox virus… or a super contagious and deadly strain of the flu.”

Four years later, in March 2021, this is exactly what was rehearsed in collaboration with the Munich Security Conference: a “deadly, global pandemic” with an “unusual strain of monkeypox virus” that is “engineered” in a laboratory and then deliberately spread “at crowded train stations”. According to the script, the pandemic lasts 18 months. The exercise scenario ends with “more than three billion cases and 270 million fatalities”.

Among the participants was Chris Elias, President of the Global Development Division at the Gates Foundation, who had also participated in Event 201, the exercise that anticipated the Covid pandemic, and who has been advising the German government for several years. According to the 2021 exercise documents, the (fictitious) monkeypox pandemic will begin on 15 May 2022.

Drug is already there

Conveniently, there is also already a cure for monkeypox, which was approved in the EU at the beginning of 2022. The manufacturer SIGA Technologies is currently in negotiations with numerous governments. The company says it is working very closely with various US authorities. Jaymie Durnan, formerly one of Donald Rumsfeld’s and Paul Wolfowitz’s closest aides at the Pentagon, sits on the board.

The simultaneous occurrence of these events, all preceded by months of planning, in May 2022, may be a coincidence. Not impossible, but hardly likely.

Paul Schreyer