WHO declares mpox emergency; on what grounds?

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For the second time in two years, WHO has declared mpox, formerly known as monkeypox, a public health emergency of international concern.

The World Health Organisation (“WHO”) first declared mpox a public health emergency of international concern (“PHEIC”) in July 2022.

WHO Director-General Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus announced that the upsurge of mpox in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (“DRC”) and a growing number of countries in Africa constitutes a PHEIC under the International Health Regulations (2005).

Two vaccines already in use for mpox are recommended by WHO’s Strategic Advisory Group of Experts on Immunisation, and approved by authorities in Nigeria and the DRC.

Last week, the Director-General triggered the process for Emergency Use Listing for mpox vaccines, which will accelerate vaccine access for lower-income countries which have not yet issued their own national regulatory approval. Emergency Use Listing also enables partners including GAVI and UNICEF to procure vaccines for distribution.

Death Rates

WHO states: “According to available data, between 0.1% and 10% of people with mpox have died. It is important to note that death rates in different settings may differ due to several factors, such as access to health care and underlying immunosuppression.”

How WHO calculated the “death rate” has not been mentioned. There are two ways to calculate the death rate of a virus. One is the Case Fatality Rate (“CFR”) and the other the Infection Fatality Rate (“IFR”). It is more likely that WHO has used the CFR which is typically higher than IFR, as it only considers deaths among diagnosed cases, whereas IFR includes deaths among all infected people, including those who may not have sought medical attention or been tested.

For examples of the exaggeration of death rates, we need look no further than covid.

Prominent doctor downplays WHO meetings over monkeypox

The seasonal flu has an IFR of roughly 0.13% and affects those most severely who are chronically unwell. For covid, they grossly exaggerated the IFR and the number of deaths.

In July 2020, some claimed that covid was “around 50 to 100 times more lethal than the seasonal flu” with an IFR between 1.46% and 13.83%, depending on age.

In August 2020, WHO stated: “At this early stage of the pandemic, most estimates of fatality ratios have been based on cases detected through surveillance and calculated using crude methods, giving rise to widely variable estimates of CFR by country – from less than 0.1% to over 25%.”

In May 2020, prominent epidemiologist John Ioannidis published a preprint paper estimating the IFR for covid to be “relatively low,” less than 0.5% and possibly as low as 0.02%, which is comparable to the IFR of influenza.

In March 2021, Ioannidis conducted a systematic review of seroprevalence studies to estimate the IFR. They found an average global IFR of approximately 0.15%.

In October 2022, John Ioannidis published a study that estimated the IFR for covid as 0.035% for people aged 0-59 years and 0.095% for those aged 0-69 years. “At a global level, pre-vaccination IFR may have been as low as 0.03% and 0.07% for 0-59 and 0-69 year old people, respectively,” the paper stated.

Related: Public Health Scotland reveals that Covid is no more deadly than seasonal flu

Adding to the unknown threat mpox poses is the inconclusive method of diagnosis of cases that is being used. It begs the question of how WHO can declare a PHEIC based on so little proof.

Nevertheless, they are convinced, according to The Conversation, that “in the past month, the virus has spread to countries that share a border with the Democratic Republic of the Congo – Rwanda and Burundi. It has also spread to other East African countries, such as Kenya and Uganda. None of these countries have had mpox cases previously.”

What Happens Next?

Claiming that “a serious epidemic anywhere in the world is a concern for all of us, as it can spread globally through travel, as we saw with the covid pandemic,” The Conversation describes what happens next: surveillance for its spread and open-source epidemic intelligence such as using AI to monitor trends in rash and fever illness.

As we noted earlier in this article, a rash and fever are not a conclusive diagnosis of mpox. Surveillance likely includes testing people and wastewater to find “cases,” as they did with covid.

“Effective communication and tackling push-back against public health measures and disinformation is also key,” The Conversation said. In other words, as we saw with covid, they intend to apply censorship, among other actions, to anyone who challenges WHO’s “official narrative.”

“Equity” in access to diagnostics and vaccines. Equity is not equality. “Equality” and “equity” are fundamentally different and the two concepts could not be more opposed. Applied in this case it means they will be targeting certain populations with ineffective and unsafe vaccines.

Many hundreds of millions, if not billions, of people across the world do not want WHO with its unelected and unaccountable bureaucrats funded by the likes of Bill Gates to coordinate a global response to anything let alone dubious claims of an international mpox emergency.

Experts advise not comply and not take the vaccine.