Further Reading

Friday, 19 January 2024

Disease X: Governments are preparing for a scarier new pandemic

Have you heard of the Disease X Act of 2023? I hadn't, until this week.

In June, a bipartisan bill was introduced to the House of Representatives to develop medical countermeasures for viruses with pandemic potential. Later in June, when the bill was introduced to the Senate, a section had been added suggesting a budget of $40 million per year for 2024 through 2028.

This $40 million annually would be on top of the 5% of our healthcare budget we will be expected to pay the World Health Organization (WHO), assuming the Pandemic Accord passes.

Back in 2018, the WHO came up with the name "Disease X" as a placeholder for any disease that hadn't been discovered yet. The name "Disease X" gets thrown around in the press every few years for a few weeks at a time, stirring up fear of the next pandemic. In fact, the New York Times referred to Covid as Disease X in a February 2020 opinion piece.

And while the Disease X Act of 2023 was introduced to Congress quietly over the summer, in the past week, Disease X fearmongering has been everywhere, just in time for the World Economic Forum's annual meeting in Davos.

On Wednesday, WHO chief Dr. Tedros Ghebreyesus will give a talk at Davos titled "Preparing for Disease X," in which he will attempt to sell the world on the "novel efforts needed to prepare healthcare systems for the multiple challenges ahead." This statement is based on the assumption that Disease X will be far deadlier than Covid....<<<Read More>>>...