Paul Hosford: Covid discussion panel puts spotlight on misinformation
Senator Sharon Keogan has been criticised for arranging a briefing for politicians and political staff entitled 'WHO pandemic treaty, know the facts'.
The AV Room at Leinster House is often used to host information sessions or lectures.
The modern marble room, hidden behind a nondescript door beside a bust of Countess Markievicz, with its steep seating and built-in top table, is more akin to a lecture hall than anything else, and on a given week, it can be booked out by TDs and Senators to hold information events.
When the office was a stone's throw from the AV Room, it was not uncommon to be invited at the door into briefings on health issues, social concerns, or the work of Oireachtas committees.
This week, the room was used by independent senator Sharon Keogan for a discussion entitled, .
The treaty, agreed in 2021, was this week called "mission critical for humanity" by the World Health Organisation (WHO) chief Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus.
With a deadline looming in just months for the treaty to be agreed, Dr Tedros has warned that future generations will not forgive those in charge today if an agreement is not reached around who does what in the event of the next pandemic.
“We cannot allow the same thing to happen next time — and there will be a next time,” he warned.
The treaty has been subject to numerous disputed, or outright false, claims around its impact on national sovereignty, the ability of the UN to deploy troops, forced vaccinations, or monitored movements.
Human rights groups like Amnesty International, the Global Initiative for Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, the International Commission of Jurists, and Human Rights Watch say that the text contains "a weak framework for ensuring that countries will be accountable for maintaining a rights-compliant response to future pandemics".
At Leinster House this week, the panel featured several speakers, kicking off with a Swiss tax lawyer named Phillip Kruse.
Mr Kruse began by acknowledging that the WHO's position is that sovereignty will not be encroached upon, but said that he was concerned about "the fundamental principles of our democracy".
He said that legal instruments within the treaty would "allow the WHO to declare a public health emergency at any time", a claim which is disputed by those in favour of the idea.
Mr Kruse was followed by English MP Andrew Bridgen.
In April last year, Mr Bridgen was permanently expelled from the Conservative Party for a tweet in which he linked to an article that purported to show the health risks of covid vaccines.
“As one consultant cardiologist said to me this is the biggest crime against humanity since the Holocaust," he said.
In his contribution, ostensibly a potted history of the WHO, the MP for North West Leicestershire spoke of the "threats" facing society including "the sexualisation of our children in schools".
He said — without expansion — that Dr Tedros had been "appointed by an unholy alliance between Bill Gates and the Chinese Communist Party".
He said the treaty would leave the Director General of the WHO with "absolute power" to announce when a pandemic began and ended.
Also speaking in the AV Room at Leinster House was MEP Christine Anderson of the AfD party.
On Monday, a German administrative court ruled that the youth wing of the far-right Alternative for Germany party (AfD) may be classified by Germany's domestic intelligence service as a "certified right-wing extremist endeavour".
Ms Anderson is a former member of Pegida, the far-right anti-Islam German group.
In her speech, she said she was "one of the few elected representatives around the world who take their job seriously", touching on globalism, the World Economic Forum, adding that "they want to get rid of you" before closing with the "one ring to rule them all" quote from books.
Wexford GP Billy Ralph told the meeting that he is one of six GPs who face a fitness to practice inquiry "mainly because they were critical of Nphet" during the pandemic, saying that they "had the audacity to treat their patients" during covid.
In December last year in the US, the Maine Board of Licensure in Medicine (BOLIM) made a finding which extended the suspension of the licence of one of the subsequent Leinster House speakers, Dr Meryl Nass.
The board found that Dr Nass engaged in "incompetence, unprofessional conduct, in deceit and misrepresentation, and violated Board rules".
It added that she had "exhibited incompetency by engaging in conduct that evidenced a lack of knowledge and inability to apply principles and skills to carry out the practice of medicine, failing to refer a patient to an acute care facility when referral was necessary for the safety of the patient, and engaging in deceit and misrepresentation in connection with services rendered within the scope of practice for lying to a pharmacist".
Also on the panel was Dr Tess Lawrie, who founded the World Council for Health group which has been accused of being used to spread covid misinformation.
A 2023 Agence France Presse fact check said that posts from Ms Lawrie on Twitter were wrongly using stats around adverse vaccine effects.
Timothy Mackey, director of the Global Health Policy and Data Institute, said Lawrie's posts are the latest to selectively use adverse event reporting data "to amplify concerns about (the) safety of vaccines".
Ms Keogan's event attracted around 30 or 40 people in person, but livestreams picked up around 7,000 views on her Twitter page.
In the days before the event, TDs had raised concerns about Ms Keogan's guests, but if she was ruffled by it she didn't show it.
When questioned about the panel's makeup by a Labour staffer, Ms Keogan responded with "best of luck to Labour with the next Business Post/RedC poll".
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