Omicron is the newly named type of coronavirus that governments are using to spread fear and to impose new restrictions on people’s activities in the name of protecting “public health.” Among those new restrictions, national governments are banning the entry of people who have been in certain countries. For, example, United States President Joe Biden unilaterally declared on Friday (no congressional approval sought or obtained) that most people, with exceptions for US citizens and some others, who have been in any of eight listed countries in Africa over the previous 14 days may not enter America.
Biden says the new restriction is “to protect the public health from travelers entering the United States.” Of course, many Americans and people around the world are fed up with the myriad of government mandates that have been imposed over the last year and a half plus, supposedly to protect them. Enough already. But, for power hungry politicians like Biden it seems there is never enough exercise of power at the expense of liberty.
While Biden cites the World Health Organization (WHO) for details regarding the omicron coronavirus variant, the WHO on Sunday made its own announcement in which it detailed the organization’s opposition to the travel bans Biden and leaders in other governments have imposed in purported reaction to the variant. Rejecting the tunnel vision approach to countering coronavirus that has assisted governments across the world in trampling on liberty and trashing economies in the name of countering coronavirus, the WHO noted the following fact that is obvious to many ordinary people and quickly rejected by many politicians: “Travel restrictions may play a role in slightly reducing the spread of COVID-19 but place a heavy burden on lives and livelihoods.”
Notably, while the WHO is opposing travel bans in response to omicron, it continues to advocate for other restrictions. The WHO has not become a liberty advocate.
At other points in the ongoing coronavirus panic, the WHO has cautioned against some of the extreme approaches governments have pursued in the name of countering coronavirus and questioned the lack of scientific basis for those approaches as well. For example, in the summer, the WHO opposed giving experimental coronavirus “vaccine” shots to children. But, then, the WHO backtracked on that advice. Similarly, a year earlier, the WHO turned on a dime from saying most people should not wear masks while going about their daily activities to being gung ho for everyone doing so. This reversal by the WHO followed a similar out of the blue reversal by high level US government officials including National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases Director Anthony Fauci and then-Surgeon General Jerome Adams.
Will the WHO stick to its opposition to travel bans, or will it shift to a position in favor of expanded government power as it did in regarding to masks and the experimental coronavirus vaccine shots for children?
Reprinted with permission from the Ron Paul Institute for Peace and Prosperity.