WHO wants to prepare for future pandemics

Health officials are meeting this week in Geneva to discuss the outlines of a text that will help countries better prepare and better fight a future pandemic.

In the hope that the mistakes would not be repeated-often with disastrous consequences-that marked the resistance to COVID-19.

We have to face serious pandemics in the future and we better be prepared than now.launched Michael Ryan, who manages emergency situations atWHO.

And for that, nations need to work togetherbelieves the Irish doctor.

So far, a great deal of ambiguity continues to reign over what form this agreement can take and discussions are still in its infancy.

But despite this ambiguity – or perhaps because of it – and despite the fact that it is the member states and not the Secretariat ofWHO negotiating, conspiracy theories flourished.

Attacking the WHO initiative

Recently, Tucker Carlson, emblematic presenter of the Fox News channel and known for spreading various conspiracy theses, warned his millions of listeners: the President of the United States Joe Biden is very close. to give the World Health Organization control over all aspects, intimate aspects of your life.

Christine Anderson, elected member of the European Parliament for Germany’s far -right AfD party, said the future agreement would provideWHO de facto power over member states.

More directly, British comedian and YouTuber Russel Brand told his 5.5 million subscribers that the deal means the future that your democracy is broken.

L ‘WHO and experts agree that these theories – which in one form or another have also appeared in Australia, Russia or elsewhere – have no connection to the veracity of the facts.

Honestly, the level of misinformation confuses meSuerie Moon, co-director of the Global Health Center of the Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies, admitted to AFP, that the process of discussions is actually in the embryonic stage.

Many of the conspiracy claims nothing to do with the reality of what is offered and possibly discussed.

Infodemic

WHO boss Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus lamented that a small minority produce false statements and deliberately manipulating factswhich states that the purposes ofWHO ay public, open and transparent.

Dr. added. Ryan: the pandemic agreement already exists for the sole purpose of setting the strategy of how we will prepare to future threats.

But their words are drowned in the hub of misinformation even theWHO accustomed to being targeted by accomplices especially since the COVID-19 pandemic.

He even invented a word for this evil: theinfodemic.

Experts believe we are faced with a widespread campaign of lies around future agreement discussions, without knowing who is orchestrating it and why.

L ‘WHO is a scarecrowexplanation to AFP Tristan Mendès France, expert on new digital cultures, and therefore easy to do revive the large audience attracted to conspiracy theorists during the pandemic.

This was confirmed by Sebastian Dieguez, a neuroscientist and disinformation specialist at the University of Friborg by citing the example of groups on social networks changing their name and subject and bringing in their thousands of subscribers.

When you have a solid network on one topic, you can easily use it for something else.the researcher said.

And misinformation has an effect.

Even if there are absurd things, they still need to be dealt with, it needs to be explained and it takes a toll on your resources.explained Sebastian Dieguez.

Suerie Moon stressed that responses were limited in this post-truth era, where people live in the same universe in terms of information.