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The WHO’s war against children

Middle school students wait to receive a vaccine. Credit: Getty

July 16, 2021 - 2:04pm

The WHO and UNICEF reported yesterday that the impact of Covid-19 restrictions had led to a sharp fall in routine childhood immunisations across the world. Their research found that “disruptions in the delivery and uptake of immunisation services caused by the Covid-19 pandemic” had seen 23 million fewer children receive core vaccinations against diphtheria, tetanus, and measles — diseases which, unlike Covid-19, are fatal for children.

The WHO’s “new research” actually underestimates the scale of the war against children’s health that their own pandemic policies have promoted. A report published by Collateral Global three weeks ago found that “pandemic restrictions substantially reduced the delivery of immunisation services in at least 68 countries affecting over 80 million children under the age of one”. That’s right: in the all-consuming debates as to the ethics of vaccinating children with Covid vaccines whose Phase 3 trial data will not be completed until the end of 2023, vaccinations against diseases which children are actually at risk from have fallen off a cliff.

So how did Covid restrictions lead to a collapse in vaccination rates? Two recent articles by doctors from Angola and Mozambique spell out the realities. In Angola, vaccination coverage fell sharply as soon as the country entered lockdown, caused by, among other things, a diversion of health resources — all this in a country which as of today has recorded a total of 951 Covid-19 deaths. In Mozambique, fuel shortages precipitated by the economic crisis produced by Covid restrictions meant that vaccination teams could not access rural communities.

Thus millions of children are now at risk of dying from childhood diseases that until 2020 were treated routinely. Their well-being has been jeopardised, too, by the Covid-induced economic collapse, and funding shortages for other treatments caused by the tunnel focus on Covid-19. And all because the WHO with the support of many world leaders are engaged in a global “war on the virus”.

The WHO’s own charter defines health broadly, as “a state of complete physical, mental and social well-being and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity”. The “mental and social well-being” of children? So what about the Chilean schoolchildren who have had four weeks of in-person classes since March 2020? Or the Colombian kids whose schools finally reopened on 8 July? And who’s going to spell out to all those British children who are self-isolating (as many as 250,000) that all this disruption is good for their health?

When the dust of this pandemic finally settles, future historians will reflect on these things for what they are: atrocities against children. One can only hope that the damage, though severe, will not be permanent. After all, the world’s youth have suffered immensely during this pandemic — it is high time that we recognise it.

Toby Green’s book The Covid Consensus: The New Politics of Global Inequality is published by Hurst. His most recent work is: “The WHO and COVID-19: Re-establishing Colonialism in Public Health”, coauthored with David Bell


Toby Green is a professor of History and associate of the Global Health Institute at King’s College, London. The updated edition of his book, The Covid Consensus, co-authored with Thomas Fazi, is published by Hurst.

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David Slade
David Slade
3 years ago

Well said and thank you for continuing to highlight this. The fact that so many still think this wretched response to a virus has any moral authority is shameful. As I’ve said to people before – if your parents/grandparents responded to the pandemic of 68 in this way, you’d still be paying for it now (if you were even here in the first place – if you come from the developing world then maybe not).

Sadly, when I tell them this, all I get back is ‘but 68 was a flu though’. Depressing.

J Bryant
J Bryant
3 years ago
Reply to  David Slade

Well said and thank you for continuing to highlight this.
Agreed.

Galeti Tavas
Galeti Tavas
3 years ago

EXACTLY!!!!!!

What I have been saying since day one of Lockdown. Just as Lockdowns commenced globally UNICEF (UN Children group) estimated 1.3 MILLION third world and developing world children would die from the reduced Western Economic activity. Those poor farm laborers in Africa who grow Europe’s cut flowers, to be air freighted to the markets across EU, UK – those alone, just think of them alone, the parents out of work, no safety net…..then the T-shirt sweat shops across Africa and the poor East, the vegetable markets, the tourists, the everything… GONE.

Poor students in the West, in every study, are shown to never catch up from missed classes, this is why it is illegal to take one’s child out of school casually. Yet we doom then to under-employability, a thing which lasts for life. Young graduated school are harmed when they do not get jobs, but just hang out – they need to begin the employment ladder to get a proper start, to learn to work jobs, and so on – these got messed up even if they did not miss school – youth need to work after school, so they get skills, and learn working. A year of progress taken from a youth is very destructive!

To save the elderly from risk we knowingly harmed the young – and who is to pay back the $50,000,000,000,000 squandered on this insane response??? THE YOUNG!

The analogy I have used from the start is if this disaster was the Titanic the Captain would call “Old and Feeble, to the lifeboats – the rest, good luck.”

No society ever wrecked the young to save the old and feeble, it goes against every human instinct! But so perverted are modern societies this is what we did! And looming is potential for a depression never seen before, as the $300,000,000,000,000 global debt becomes too expensive to service if interests rates rise, to counter inflation – inflation being a tax on everyone by consuming their savings, and pay always lagging, and pensions cannot be funded….

You Masking Sheep! Look at what you have done.

Last edited 3 years ago by Galeti Tavas
Alyona Song
Alyona Song
3 years ago
Reply to  Galeti Tavas

Thank you for calling it for what it is. Young lives were and continue to be ruined for the sake of “saving” old ones. Children are made hostages of shameless politicians and teachers’ unions. It is perverted and inhuman. All this hypocrisy – “covid wrecked”, “virus destroyed”, “we are at war” – is sickening.

L Walker
L Walker
3 years ago
Reply to  Alyona Song

I’m old, 81. I didn’t want anyone saving me at the expense of the young. When this nonsense of lockdowns started I saw it as politics, and then theater. We’re all gonna die folks.

Andrea X
Andrea X
3 years ago

Amen!

Thank you.

Simric Yarrow
Simric Yarrow
3 years ago

As a teacher, I couldn’t agree more. I’m horrified at what my profession has acquiesced in over the past year and a half through their own fears and misunderstanding of statistical risk.

Francis MacGabhann
Francis MacGabhann
3 years ago

So we’re suffering from Covid snobbery? Any number of deaths from any cause other than covid is acceptable so long as the focus is maniacally on one and only one — not very lethal — cause of illness. Well, who saw that coming? Oh, right, all of us morlocks.