The World Health Organization announced last week that the COVID-19 global health emergency has ended as fewer people around the world are becoming seriously ill or dying from the virus.  

“It is with great hope that I declare COVID-19 over as a global health emergency,” Tedros Adhanom Ghbreyesus, the director general at the WHO, said. 

The New York Times reported that the decision to end the emergency does not change very much from the public health perspective because “many countries have already ended their own states of emergency for COVID, and have moved away from almost all public health restrictions.”

Tedros did not sound like he was in a celebratory mood. One of his deputies said the “emergency” is over but “COVID is not.”

The United States will end its COVID-19 public health emergency on 11 May.

Dr. Mike Ryan, executive director of WHO’s Health Emergencies Program, told reporters that the agency believes the virus will continue to spread and, like in most cases, the pandemic will only “truly end when the next pandemic begins”. 

“I know that’s a terrible thought but that is the history of pandemics,” he said.

Dr. K. Srinath Reddy, the head of India’s Public Health Foundation, said the WHO made the correct move to lift the emergency declaration because the disease “no longer possesses the same level of danger” and that the virus has reached a “certain level of coexistence with the human host.

As of Sunday, the WHO said there has been a total of more than 765 million confirmed cases around the world and about 7 million people have died. Tedros said the actual number of deaths is likely closer to 20 million. Over 1.13 million people died from the virus in the U.S. alone, the agency said. 

The virus is still circulating in the public. There are about 8,277 people hospitalized in the U.S. with the virus and 77,294 new cases each week. About 1,100 people die in the U.S. from the virus every week.

Tedros said COVID-19 must be remembered and serve as a “permanent reminder of the potential for new viruses to emerge with devastating consequences,” according to CNN. 

He blamed a lack of coordination, equity, and solidarity for contributing to the virus’s spread and severity. He said these conditions meant the tools that could have been used were not as effective as they could have been.

The WHO also drew criticism over its response to the virus. 

The AP noted that the agency is the only in the world that is mandated to coordinate the globe’s response to these kinds of health threats, but it faltered “repeatedly,” and seemed to play politics. 

The agency praised China publicly in the early days of the outbreak and said it was impressed with Beijing’s transparency. The AP noted that the WHO was bullshitting the public and criticized China in private messages for doing the exact opposite.

The WHO was also criticized for issuing contradictory messages during the outbreak, which only added to the public’s confusion. For example, on 1 April 2020, the agency said healthy people need not wear masks, only to revise the guidance on 5 June and call for even these individuals to wear face coverings.

“We all have lessons to learn from the pandemic,” Tedros said in response to some criticism. “We are committed to accountability and we will continue to learn.”

TRENDPOST: The COVID-19 outbreak showed what a waste these public health agencies are, and how they are nothing but stooges for the pharmaceutical giants and government overlords. Many people woke up too late to the fact that masks did more harm than good, social distancing just led to social disorders. (See “STUDY PROVES: FACE MASKS INCREASES RISK OF STILLBIRTHS, TESTICULAR DYSFUNCTION” 25 Apr 2023, “BLOWING UP IN THEIR FACES: MASKS DON’T WORK IN PREVENTING COVID SPREAD” 14 Feb 2023, and “LOCKDOWN LUNACY CREATING “MENTAL HEALTH PANDEMIC’” 26 Jan 2021.) 

Tedros said the COVID outbreak proved to be a disaster for many small businesses “exacerbated political divisions, led to the spread of misinformation and plunged millions into poverty,” according to The Associated Press.

It is not surprising that after three years of fear mongering and propaganda, Tedros decides to blame the “virus” for all these things, and not his agency and the politicians who took his advice. 

The fact is politicians around the world used the pandemic to crack down on civil liberties and hand pick the businesses that got to survive, while their corporate donors—especially in the tech field—were making a profit windfall.