October 13, 2020 (LifeSiteNews) – The World Health Organization (WHO), whose credibility has been considered by many the ultimate authority justifying severe coronavirus mitigation policies—and even zealous high-tech censorship—has reversed another position, this time on lockdowns.
In an interview hosted by the British magazine The Spectator, special envoy of the WHO Dr. David Nabarro, laments the “terrible ghastly global catastrophe” of lockdowns and discourages world leaders from using them since they “just have one consequence that you must never ever belittle, and that is making poor people an awful lot poorer.”
WATCH: Dr David Nabarro, the WHO's Special Envoy on Covid-19, tells Andrew Neil: 'We really do appeal to all world leaders: stop using lockdown as your primary control method'. Watch the full interview here: https://t.co/XLdaedsKVS #SpectatorTV @afneil | @davidnabarro pic.twitter.com/1M4xf3VnXQ
As early as April, despite the grave economic results of such policies, WHO officials supported lockdowns and warned against lifting them too early, while in July, these same officials alerted that “total lockdown” may have to be resumed, or newly imposed in some regions, due to an increase in the detection of positive COVID-19 infections.
But Nabarro’s statement indicates an effective reversal of such an approach on the part of this agency of the United Nations.
“We in the World Health Organization do not advocate lockdowns as the primary means of control of this virus,” Nabarro stated. “The only time we believe a lockdown is justified is to buy you time to reorganize, regroup, rebalance your resources, protect your health workers who are exhausted, but by and large, we’d rather not do it.
“Just look at what’s happened to the tourism industry, for example in the Caribbean, or in the Pacific, because people aren’t taking their holidays … Look what’s happening to poverty levels. It seems that we may well have a doubling of world poverty by next year. We may well have at least a doubling of child malnutrition because children are not getting meals at school and their parents, in poor families, are not able to afford it. This is a terrible ghastly global catastrophe, actually.”
Nabarro concluded these comments appealing to world leaders to “stop using lockdown as your primary control method.”
President Donald Trump celebrated this recognition by the WHO tweeting that they “just admitted that I was right. Lockdowns are killing countries all over the world. The cure cannot be worse than the problem itself. Open up your states, Democrat governors. Open up New York. A long battle, but they finally did the right thing!”
The World Health Organization just admitted that I was right. Lockdowns are killing countries all over the world. The cure cannot be worse than the problem itself. Open up your states, Democrat governors. Open up New York. A long battle, but they finally did the right thing!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) October 12, 2020
It’s not the first time that the WHO has reversed their position on significant coronavirus policies. In late March they strongly recommended against the general public wearing face coverings.
“There is no specific evidence to suggest that the wearing of masks by the mass population has any potential benefit,” said Dr. Mike Ryan, executive director of the WHO health emergencies program. “In fact, there's some evidence to suggest the opposite in the misuse of wearing a mask properly or fitting it properly.”
Yet in early June, this position was updated in support of wearing masks for a host of non-scientific reasons, even while maintaining in the fine print that “the widespread use of masks by healthy people … is not … supported by high quality or direct scientific evidence.”
According to reporting by the BBC, this change in their recommendation, favoring the wearing of masks, was not the result of scientific evidence, but “political lobbying.”
Also, though the WHO’s “initial assumption” was that asymptomatic individuals were as contagious as those with symptoms, they later admitted that asymptomatic transfer of the coronavirus is “very rare.”
This revelation alone called into question the necessity of devastating lockdown measures across the globe which were implemented largely to prevent asymptomatic individuals from unknowingly spreading the virus.
Despite such significant inconsistencies, big tech giants have been using the WHO as their standard for censoring the voices of scientific experts, and others, who challenge the latter’s recommendations. YouTube CEO Susan Woicicki affirmed, “Anything that would go against World Health Organization recommendations would be a violation of our policy, and so (to) remove (content) is another very important part of our policy.”
Facebook’s head of global policy management, Monika Bickert, confirmed the same for the social networking giant: “We decided we would remove content that directly contradicted [the WHO] and could contribute to risk of imminent physical harm.”
In May, President Donald Trump responded to this new intensification of censorship by these companies regretting that “The Radical Left is in total command & control of Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and Google,” and affirming that, his administration “is working to remedy this illegal situation.”