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In May 2022, rumors surfaced claiming that U.S. President Joe Biden was planning to give the country's sovereignty over health issues to the World Health Organization (WHO), along with the leaders of 193 other countries. While these rumors stemmed from genuine proposals that United Nation members were discussing at the time to strengthen the world's preparedness against global pandemics, they grossly exaggerated, distorted, and misinterpreted the actual impacts of the proposed ideas. For example, one popular claim held that proposed amendments to existing guidelines would grant WHO the authority to lock down countries. Former Republican Rep. Michele Bachmann popularized that assertion when she discussed the issue in an interview with Steve Bannon, a political strategist who was charged with defrauding people before he was pardoned by former President Donald Trump. During this interview, Bachmann said: While it was true that almost 200 countries (including the U.S.) were members of WHO, and that that group was discussing potential changes to how they work together as of spring 2022 (we elaborate on that fact below), Bachmann's claim that those talks could result in the WHO having new authority to implement lockdowns in the United States or any other country was untrue. In 1969, the WHO adopted a set of guidelines known as the International Health Regulations (IHR) in order to empower the international health agency to surveil global diseases. International officials have revised the regulations a few times over the years, including in 2005 after the 2002-2003 SARS outbreak. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) wrote: In December 2021, following the deaths of nearly 6 million people around the globe from the COVID-19 pandemic, world leaders started working on amendments to the IHR in order to strengthen the world's response to the next global pandemic. Reuters reported that some proposed amendments involved the sharing of data related to emerging viruses, a ban on wildlife markets, and a plan for equitable vaccine distribution. The European Union proposed that the ideas take the form of a new treaty, though the U.S. and other countries expressed reluctancy toward such a binding agreement, Reuters reported. In other words, as of this writing, WHO members were discussing the proposed amendments to existing regulations, and the exact contents of a future pandemic preparedness accord were unknown. Reuters reported: While there was no official version of what the WHO was calling a pandemic preparedness accord among members, the Biden administration had released its ideas for how it would like to amend existing international guidelines. Those amendments (available via a PDF on the WHO's website for public viewing) did not outline ways for the WHO to gain new authority to implement U.S. lockdowns. In fact, the amendments made no mention of lockdowns at all. That said, it was still possible that the WHO could recommend a lockdown in a region due to a contagious disease. But that recommendation would still require government action in order to take place, and that system was already in place, with or without the proposed amendments by Biden's team. Additionally, nowhere in this document did the presidential administration propose to give WHO the authority to override the decisions of any member state, nor to give up its national sovereignty. In general, the Biden administration's proposed amendments dealt with monitoring emerging diseases, implementing a notification system across countries, and developing strategies for WHO officials to assist member states in times of emergency. For example, Article 12, a section of the document that dealt with the determination of a public health emergency, stated that when a global health threat is determined, the Director-General of WHO shall notify all States Parties and seek to consult with the State Party in whose territory the event arises. WHO Director-General Tedros Ghebreyesus addressed some of the above-outlined rumors during his opening remarks at a media briefing on May 17. Ghebreyesus dismissed the notion that any country was giving up its sovereignty by working on the potential agreement between WHO members, and stated that they, not WHO officials, were driving the work. Ghebreyesus said: Considering that statement, as well as the fact that the claim was unsupported by the actual language in Biden's proposed amendments, we rate this claim False.
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