On the World Health Organization’s current round of pandemic treaty negotiations

Preemption doctrine at the global level: America is already under stealth occupation.

Several independent reporters have been writing in recent weeks about the new round of negotiations the World Health Organization and European Union are organizing, aimed at drafting and adopting new pandemic treaty terms.

I’ve written about it a few times too, most recently here.

Daniel Horowitz published a piece today: Stop the pandemic treaty and global health fascism before it’s too late.

It’s a good report, except that my understanding is, the pandemic treaty is already in place.

It’s the 2005 WHO International Health Regulations, and it’s the legal framework that made the last two years of government overreach possible in all the countries that mounted coordinated “mitigations” to extinguish human social and economic lives and liberties.

The latest round of negotiations is just that: the latest round.

It’s intended to expand and strengthen the reach of the 2005 IHR that is already in force and currently supersedes federal and state constitutions, charters, legislatures and courts.

Most likely, the globalist framers of the IHR update aim to make the surveillance and behavioral control mechanisms invoked for Covid-19 as an epidemiological emergency, applicable to any and all other international emergencies as dictated by the World Health Organization. Things like wars, food and fuel supply crises, currency collapses and sustained, widespread Internet outages.

To repeat: a global “pandemic treaty” has been in force since 2007, when the United States became a member/party to the WHO International Health Regulations.

It’s a global version of the preemption doctrine that has helped the federal and state governments in America tie the hands of local governments and ordinary citizens for more than two centuries, since Dartmouth College v. Woodward in 1819.

The American regulatory implementation tools to execute the WHO’s governance of the United States have been in place domestically since 2017, when the US Department of Health and Human Services adopted implementing regulations laying out surveillance, quarantine and other “emergency” public health-related powers that would kick in automatically and silently when and if the WHO Director-General declared a “public health emergency of international concern.” (PHEIC).

The mechanism for that automatic, silent power transfer lies in 42 CFR 70 — US Domestic Interstate Quarantine Regulations.

Through those regulations, the appointed Secretary of Health and Human Services has been legally empowered to seize and unilaterally exercise the governing authority formerly held by the President, Congress and federal courts.

The Secretary of Health and Human Services, in that scenario, acts on behalf of World Health Organization technocrats, not on behalf of American citizens, and not bound by the US Constitution.

WHO Director-General Tedros declared a PHEIC on Jan. 30, 2020.

The declaration is still in effect, despite the temporary purported “rollbacks” in various smaller jurisdictions such as states, counties, municipalities and school districts.

In other words, America is already under stealth occupation by the World Health Organization.

Psychological and economic coercion have been enough to maintain the WHO’s grip on power up to this point, but kinetic armed force and involuntary detention are already authorized by the IHR and 42 CFR 70, to be delegated to local law enforcement whenever the Secretary of Health and Human Services gives the green light. Which he or she can do unilaterally, right now, without Presidential, Congressional or judicial review or ratification.

Implementing regulations at the state and county level are already in place in many jurisdictions. They’re based on the Model State Emergency Health Powers Act (MSEHPA) which was drafted in 2001 under the pretext of addressing “bioterrorism” in the wake of the 9/11 attacks, by the Center for Law and the Public's Health at Georgetown and Johns Hopkins University, at the request of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The CDC is a division of the Department of Health and Human Services.

By 2006, Arizona, Florida, Georgia, Hawaii, Maine, Maryland, Minnesota, Missouri, New Hampshire, New Mexico, South Dakota, Tennessee, Utah, and Virginia had adopted state-level versions of the MSEHPA.

Since at least August 2021, Arizona and several other states have been adopting “intergovernmental agreements” and “memoranda of understanding” between state agencies and county-level administrators (for example, Cochise County, AZ). These IGAs condition state passthrough of federal Covid funding on county-level mergers of law enforcement and public health functions, and full compliance with current and future CDC/HHS directives.

As far as I can tell, Pennsylvania doesn’t have a version of the MSEHPA on the books yet. There was an attempt to adopt one in 2001 (HB2261), and a Pennsylvania joint legislative committee produced reports addressing related topics in January 2013 and November 2013.

Further preparations for armed enforcement of public health directives have been made through reports and training programs jointly organized by the US Department of Justice and the CDC/HHS. See, for example, the 2006 report The Role of Law Enforcement in Public Health Emergencies, which covers “The Role of Law Enforcement in Mass Vaccination and Preventive Measures;” “Law Enforcement’s Role During Voluntary Restrictions,” and “Law Enforcement’s Role During Involuntary Restrictions, Including Quarantine” at pp. 18-20. See also the 2008 report: A Framework for Improving Cross-Sector Coordination for Emergency Preparedness and Response. Action Steps for Public Health, Law Enforcement, the Judiciary and Corrections.

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Some of our political, media and tech leaders probably know all this, and don’t talk about it.

Many probably don’t even know.

And it certainly hasn’t been announced to the citizenry at large.

The WHO IHR and 42 CFR 70 are the legal reasons why US federal courts have not and will not even review, much less overturn pandemic mitigation measures on constitutional or civil liberties grounds, but will only play around the edges on limited, procedural grounds.

To repeat the point: the latest round of negotiations that started in late 2021 is intended to draft a new version that expands and strengthens the already-existing, massive powers of the WHO to usurp national sovereignty under PHEIC pretexts.

I agree with Horowitz and the many other voices calling for the United States and other national governments, acting within their extremely limited current powers, to refuse participation in the latest negotiating round as it moves forward.

But the United States government also needs to withdraw our country from the World Health Organization completely, a one-year process President Trump initiated in July 2020, and President Biden reversed in January 2021 as one of his first executive acts.

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St. Frances de Sales, patron saint of journalists.