A new video report breaks down the recent trend among G20 countries of pouring millions into so-called 'pandemic preparedness' programs, and questions whether these investments are justified by data.
Demasi points out that despite the massive increase in funding, "mortality from infectious diseases has been declining for decades, thanks to advances in hygiene, nutrition, medical treatments and reduced poverty, even with COVID 2020, to 2021, mortality remained below 2010 levels."
"The WHO has identified nine priority diseases for research and development, yet five of these diseases have never caused more than 1,000 recorded deaths in history, aside from COVID-19, whose origins remain a topic of debate, the rest of the diseases are largely confined to specific regions, primarily in parts of Africa," she explained.
"On the list the WHO also includes a hypothetical outbreak that they call disease X – it's a placeholder for an unknown outbreak that could emerge in the future," the researcher continued.
"And while it's intended to promote vigilance, its severity is entirely speculative and can encourage modelers to use catastrophic scenarios to estimate future risk, causing governments to make fear-based policy decisions based on little evidence," she warned.
Demasi's video also highlights that according to researchers from the University of Leeds, including policy experts Professor Garrett Brown and Dr. David Bell, this massive diversion of funds to prevent hypothetical or non-threatening outbreaks may actually contribute to worse health outcomes by taking money that could be used to tackle genuine threats.
