Monday April 28, 2003
See today’s LifeSiteNews stories
World Health Organization Accused of Using SARS for Political Agendas
Putting Toronto on travel danger list considered WHO “junk science” power grab
TORONTO, Ont., April 28, 2003 (LifeSiteNews.com) – Most Toronto citizens, who are going about their lives quite normally, are puzzled over the fear and paranoia of people outside the city who are afraid to travel to Toronto and many within the city who are needlessly worrying themselves sick over what they are hearing and reading from the media. It is actually extremely rare to encounter someone who personally knows anyone who has been infected by this latest form of influenza.
LifeSite, headquartered in Toronto, immediately questioned the near hysteria by some people that accompanied the first cases of SARS in the city. Although the matter is indeed serious and lives have been lost (21 to date in a region of over 3 million), the statistics and pre-existing health problems related to most of the deaths, did not at all appear to justify some of the extreme response. Half of those infected have been hospital workers and all cases have been directly traced to the original outbreak at Grace Hospital.
Thousands of healthy, unaffected persons have been isolated in quarantine – some justifiably so, as authorities were being super cautious and were themselves victims of institutionalized exaggeration of risk perception. Unfortunately, this had the effect of greatly exaggerating the danger to the public. Especially tragic is that, in the affected hospitals, many dying or seriously ill non-SARS patients have been left too long without any visitors, including their husbands, wives or children, to comfort them and to provide extra care usually needed by patients in Toronto’s chronically understaffed hospitals. In one case known to LifeSite, a mother with two children was not allowed into an affected hospital after her husband went in with a pain in his leg and she received a telephone call that he had died from a blood clot. Critical surgeries have been postponed and many physicians left feeling totally helpless over their inability to treat their patients’ serious needs.
LifeSite was informed that a Catholic archdiocesan spokesperson announced “almost with glee” to all priests at the pre-Easter Chrism mass that, because of SARS, they were mandated to change important religious practices throughout the diocese, with no scientifically sound reason to justify such an extreme order. The flock and pastors meekly complied with this “civic duty” while the drastic action and its enormous media publicity added considerably to the paranoia. One pastor was so affected that he screamed at parishioners not to touch a woman who fainted during a Sunday mass.
A Mexican correspondent told LifeSite it was reported there that Toronto’s international airport was shut down. The LifeSite reporter responded he was at the airport only a few hours earlier and all was perfectly normal, aside from some visitors arriving wearing face masks. Health authorities are advising that masks are not recommended except in certain hospitals. A European acquaintance said there were reports that Toronto was near collapse while the reality was that its roads and transit were jammed with crowds going to work, school, shopping or other activities. Movie theatres, weddings, banquets all carried on.
The World Heath Organization (WHO) targeting of Toronto as a danger zone for international travel because of SARS has been a last straw for those trying to temper the wave of sensational hype.
The April 25 National Post reported that Mount Sinai Hospital microbiologist and SARS expert, Donald Low said the WHO’s travel alert for Toronto is based on bad science, but the group’s directors “will never admit it.” Post columnist Christie Blatchford wrote in the column “one thing he is absolutely sure of, he (Low) said…that science — in other words, the nature and epidemiology of the Toronto SARS outbreak — had bugger all to do with the travel advisory that is already pounding the city economy.”
Financial post editor Terence Corcoran, an astute observer of UN shenanigans for many years, ripped into WHO’s Toronto travel advisory. He wrote, “All I can say is welcome to the wonderful world of the WHO, global headquarters for the world’s worst intellectual virus: junk science.” Corcoran emphasized that “in any reading of the facts, Canada and Toronto have SARS under control… the risks of contracting SARS in Toronto are now infinitesimal.” Thanks for that is especially due to Toronto hospital health care workers who have endured grueling work shifts and discomfort from infection control requirements.
Corcoran explains the WHO’s action, confirming what LifeSite has often noted about other UN agencies, stating, “the WHO marches to political drummers and agenda beats that are far removed from the reality of the subjects it claims to deal with. In the case of SARS, the WHO is taking precedent-setting steps to expand its powers and reach.” The WHO, therefore, is seen by Corcoran as attempting to exploit the SARS crisis to further the UN’s ambitions for world governance by its unaccountable bureaucrats, an agenda co-incidentally, that Canada’s federal government intensely supports.
The current head of the WHO is the leftist Norewegian Gro Harlem Brundtland. LifeSite has previously reported on this UN agency’s support for population control measures and its complicity in the Philippine population control vaccine scandal.
AS of April 28 the Ontario Ministry of Health reports the following:
“Two weeks ago, there were thousands of people in quarantine, two hospitals were closed and the number of exposure sites in the province was at 11. Since April 13, the total number of people in hospital has dropped by 50 per cent, from 138 to 69 today. At the same time, discharges from hospital have risen dramatically to 156 today from 55, an increase of more than 180 percent. As of today, there are 39 active probable cases, which include 37 in hospital, one at home and one under investigation. Of these 37 hospital patients, five are in critical or deteriorating condition….The Scarborough Hospital’s Grace Division and York Central Hospital, the two hospitals that were closed, have started reopening some of their units while the rest of the Greater Toronto Area hospitals are returning to normal operations.”
See the Christie Blatchford article – Low earns medal in the SARS war
https://www.nationalpost.com/commentary/story.html?id=3FA52DA…
Terence Corcoran article – SARS a test run for more power:
https://www.nationalpost.com/commentary/story.html?id=880BE13…
Henry Miller article in the April 26 Post – Genuine experts do not panic the public
https://www.nationalpost.com/search/site/story.asp?id=B54B62E…
See Ontario Ministry of Health page
https://www.health.gov.on.ca
Previous LifeSite coverage of WHO:
NEW WORLD HEALTH ORGANIZATION CHIEF INVOLVED IN POPULATION CONTROL VACCINE SCANDAL
https://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2003/jan/03013003.html
UN & IPPF BEHIND INTERNATIONAL PROMOTION OF “EMERGENCY CONTRACEPTION”
https://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/1999/dec/991210a.html
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