During the WHO press conference on global health issues on November 9, WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus announced that since February, Covid deaths have dropped by 90 per cent.

Looking at the data, the world is generally showing lowering trends for both deaths and cases. According to Worldometers, as of November 19, the number of weekly global deaths had dropped by 8 per cent compared to the previous week.

In a September CDC report on the mortality risks among patients hospitalised primarily for Covid in America, comparing the Delta and Omicron strains, it was found that mortality rate for these seriously ill patients had dropped by two-thirds as Omicron took over from Delta. Perhaps most importantly, the vast majority of deaths occurred in those over 65 years of age (81.9 per cent), and persons with three or more underlying medical conditions (73.4 per cent). And only 16 medical conditions were assessed, including cancer, cerebrovascular disease, chronic lung disease, cystic fibrosis, diabetes, and chronic liver disease, each one of which can be life-threatening conditions.

Even as early as March 2022, the Financial Times had published an analysis showing that in England, Covid had become less deadly than the seasonal flu.

All of these data point to the fact that the Covid virus has become much less deadly. However, despite these optimistic data, and almost three years into the pandemic, the WHO and medical leaders such as Dr Anthony Fauci, Director of the NIAID and Chief Medical Advisor to the President, still insist that the pandemic is not over.

‘Almost 10,000 deaths a week is 10,000 too many for a disease that can be prevented and treated,’ Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said.

While these deaths are undoubtedly sad affairs, given what we know now about the virus, it is stupefying that the head of an organisation dealing with global health can say such a thing with a straight face.

Firstly, deaths happen. Approximately 55-57 million people die every year, which is more than a million deaths a week. This makes Covid-related deaths less than 1 per cent of the total. But we know that most of those who die with Covid are old and already infirm, and they are likely dying from underlying conditions that are exacerbated by Covid. And if 10,000 deaths a week (or about half a million deaths a year, albeit this number is dropping) is enough to keep a pandemic going, why has the WHO not given tuberculosis the same prestige? After all, TB killed about 1.6 million people in 2021 alone, representing a significant rise in deaths due to this infectious disease.

Secondly, the consequences of the reactions to the pandemic, led by these same medical institutions, have been nonsensical and disastrous in many ways. Not only have freedoms and human rights been trampled upon in many countries, livelihoods have been destroyed. Even putting that aside, the world now faces mysterious excess deaths that far surpass Covid-related deaths. The same medical bodies that are keen to keep the pandemic going is paying curiously little attention to the sharp rise in excess deaths, which is estimated to be at least twice that of Covid-related deaths. Alarmingly, unlike Covid, these cases seem to affect younger and apparently healthy people.

It is not within the ambit of health bodies to stop deaths, but it is their responsibility when their recommendations are used by governments and institutions to significantly affect people’s normal lives, and especially when the consequences of these measures may have caused more deaths than the pandemic.

Thirdly, though Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said that Covid is ‘treatable’, his organisation and other medical institutions have consistently stood in the way of medical innovation regarding the treatment of the disease. Many doctors have been censored or ostracised due to their attempts to treat the novel virus with existent drugs. Prominent scientists who simply offered measured criticism of the ‘official’ response to the pandemic were ridiculed and defamed. This situation is made more preposterous as many of the official advice have been shown to be bad advice that had to be walked back.

Many cheap and safe drugs that have been used clinically for decades, as well as supplements that one can buy from supermarkets have been shown by hundreds of studies to provide benefits to Covid. Studies that looked at regular exercise also showed significant positive effects. But these health bodies never advocated these simple measures, even when the vaccines were unavailable.

But when vaccines did become available, they pushed them with unqualified fervour, often body-guarded by half-truths, such as that the vaccines are safe and effective, at a time when it was impossible to know this. Indeed, time has proven that the vaccines are at best transiently and partially effective, do not prevent transmission, and may carry serious side effects that are finally been acknowledged. But when people, such as the journalist Alex Berenson, questioned the vaccines, they were ostracised from the public sphere. Even now, these institutions are pushing bivalent vaccines, even though data seem to show that they are associated with even higher risks of side effects than monovalent vaccines.

Given this dismal record of advice-giving, perhaps we can do better by not listening to those who are adamant to keep the pandemic going.