“People are thinking COVID has gone away and we're getting back to normal. But in a sort-of international public health world, that's not the case at all. We're building new institutions, we're expanding institutions, and all the expansion is around pandemic preparedness and response.”

In this episode, I sit down with public health physician and Brownstone Institute fellow Dr. David Bell. A former World Health Organization medical officer, he recently published “Pandemic Preparedness and the Road to International Fascism” in the American Journal of Economics and Sociology.

“The hope of writing the paper, and I think of us talking, is to try to get the public health world, who are very much on board with this and going forward with it, of stepping back and really thinking what they're doing, because they've repeatedly done huge harm to society over the last couple of hundred years. And it's clear that they're on that path again,” says Dr. Bell.

He argues that public health played a large role in justifying the takeover of populations by colonial empires of Europe, and that given new International Health Regulations, which will have force under international law, it is likely that history may repeat itself.

“Forerunners to the World Health Organization were the Paris Agreements and other agreements of the late 19th century around stopping pandemics coming from the colonies to Europe,” says Dr. Bell.