The growing trend of disinformation operations is weakening the trust in international community general and multilateral institutions in particular. The policy of biological weapons disinformation is being pursued by all the major powers, and quite interestingly, the victim of it is also from all the major global political groupings.
Social Media + Society, 8 (4), 2022: The coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic was an unexpected event and resulted in catastrophic consequences with long-lasting behavioral effects. People began to seek explanations for different aspects of COVID-19 and resorted to conspiracy narratives.
“We’re not just fighting an epidemic; we’re fighting an infodemic,” said World Health Organization (WHO) Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus at the Munich Security Conference on February 15, 2020.
Despite its moniker, the 1918 “Spanish flu” pandemic almost certainly did not originate in Spain. The belligerents of World War I suppressed reporting on the outbreak in order to avoid harming morale, while Spain, as a neutral country, had a media free to report openly on the extent of the disease. Since most media coverage of the outbreak came from Spain, so too did its origin story.
ABSTRACT: This policy paper offers an in-depth study of the ongoing negotiations for the Pandemic Treaty. The treaty has been proposed as a strategic response to manage global health crises in the post-COVID-19 era and is being developed under the World Health Organization's (WHO) purview. The paper is segmented into five parts: Part I recounts the inception and evolution of the Pandemic Treaty negotiations within the WHO's framework. It summarises the proposed treaty's objectives and major provisions currently under negotiation.