The approval of the new national pandemic plan and the startling statements made before the COVID committee by the former director of AIFA, Nicola Magrini—who, regarding COVID vaccines, stated that it was common knowledge that “that drug did not prevent transmission”—bring the issues of healthcare and national sovereignty over health-related decisions back to the forefront of the debate. The following article aims to analyze the recent and less recent history of how we arrived at the triumph of dogmatism and global centralization in the healthcare sector and proposes a search for a solution to the troubling problems that all this poses. [FM]
Globalization has led to a centralization of decision-making power in a small number of centers of authority and a homogenizing contraction of economic, legal, and cultural models, alongside the weakening of national sovereignty. This process of standardization has not spared healthcare in its advance: the pandemic management of SARS-CoV-2 and the paradigm proposed by the 2030 Agenda, which calls for global vaccination coverage, represent emblematic cases of a phenomenon with deep-rooted origins.
The preparatory phases of mass vaccination as the first global therapeutic strategy: a timeline
The first directors of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), founded in 1946, understood that intercepting infectious outbreaks allowed them to receive generous funding from the U.S. federal government. In 1951, epidemiologist Langmuir founded the Epidemic Intelligence Service (EIS), an offshoot of the CDC, with semi-covert active surveillance functions aimed at identifying the onset of an outbreak with epidemic potential: the EIS, a constantly active radar, served as a crucial monitoring body for the CDC’s survival, leading the agency to the point of classifying the presence of just a few people geographically close to one another, all with the same disease, occurring weeks or months apart, as an “epidemic outbreak.” Pandemics serve as the preferred lever for imposing universal vaccination protocols, as in the most recent case of COVID-19. And it was precisely in 2009 that the World Health Organization updated the definition of a “global influenza pandemic,” lowering the criteria required to declare a Phase 6 pandemic alert, a sign of an ongoing pandemic. Phase 6, in fact, is characterized by “nationwide outbreaks in at least one other country in a different WHO region.” The regions referred to are Africa, the Americas, the Eastern Mediterranean, Europe, Southeast Asia, and the Western Pacific. In this way, the WHO can easily declare the start of a new pandemic at any moment.
In 1998, the Children’s Vaccine Initiative (CVI), an institution sponsored by the World Bank, the Rockefeller Foundation, the WHO, the UNDP (United Nations Development Programme), and UNICEF, published a document regarding vaccination in the 21st century: the stated goal is to impose five-year vaccination immunization plans on governments, with the widest possible coverage, from infancy to old age. Two years later, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation offered $750 million to major international actors (the World Bank, WHO, and UNICEF) on the condition that they join a global alliance, the GAVI Alliance, to improve access to immunization in developing countries, thanks to the support of donor countries such as Italy, which committed to contributing $635 million over twenty years. GAVI, a public-private global health partnership foundation under Swiss law, not established on the basis of an international treaty, ranks as the third-largest multilateral health funder. In the 2020–2021 period, the Gates Foundation and GAVI ranked second among WHO contributors, influencing its operations, as admitted by Margaret Chan, former WHO Director-General from 2007 to 2017. Furthermore, the Global Health Security Agenda, successor to the failed CVI, was established in 2014 to sponsor five-year plans for the expansion of vaccinations and assigned Italy the role of lead country for vaccination strategies for the 2015–2020 period: Italy’s commitment was evaluated in light of the rollout of pediatric measles vaccinations. The task was assigned to former Health Minister Beatrice Lorenzin, who mandated ten vaccinations for children between the ages of zero and sixteen (Law 119/17, the so-called “Lorenzin Law”).
In order to create an uncritical mass of healthcare professionals, it was also necessary to standardize academic teaching, both in terms of content and the epistemological framework underlying it. The standardization of curricula in medical and scientific faculties began in the early 20th century: Abraham Flexner, an American educationalist, was tasked by the then-president of the Carnegie Foundation—a well-known philanthropic institution—with drafting a report on the state of the art of American medical education. The Flexner Report (1910), under the pretext of providing a clear snapshot of the quality of teaching, ended up imposing conditions on academic institutions that they had to meet in order to survive and receive state subsidies, leading to the closure of hundreds of schools that taught alternative healing methods. Today, more than a century after the publication of the Flexner Report, the approach to certain aspects of the medical discipline is of a dogmatic-fideistic nature, and subjecting them to objective judgment, free from doctrinarism and atavistic conditioning, is liable to excommunication.
The Risks Associated with Standardized Practices: A Retrospective Analysis of Measles Vaccination and the Case of COVID-19
The 2030 Agenda, an action plan adopted by the UN, includes statements supporting the implementation of global health initiatives, declaring, for example, that measles vaccination campaigns have prevented nearly 16 million deaths from 2000 to the present. Before the introduction of a measles vaccine, epidemics occurred every two years in the U.S. and the U.K. throughout the 19th century. In 1960, newspapers such as the New York Times fueled public fear of contagion, yet the mortality rate had already plummeted to 0.0002% in the United States and 0.03% in England and Wales. In 1963, the first inactivated vaccine was approved in the U.S.; not only was it responsible for cases of pneumonia and encephalopathy, but it also proved to offer little protection. This ineffectiveness necessitated a booster shot with a live-attenuated virus vaccine. This protocol induced severe forms of the disease in vaccinated individuals, attributable to the phenomenon known as “antigenic original sin,” described by the American virologist and epidemiologist Thomas Francis. According to Francis, vaccination programs the body to recognize only certain antigens, preventing it from developing a competent and specific immune response. The theory of antigenic sin is also well illustrated by vaccination against pertussis and is cited as a possible cause of vaccine failure against the ever-changing influenza viruses. Despite this, in 1963 U.S. authorities predicted the eradication of measles within four years through the administration of a single dose of live attenuated vaccine, which was supposed to guarantee lifelong immunity without side effects.
Ten years later, the goal had not been achieved: two booster shots were required, whose protection did not last beyond twelve months. The CDC confirmed that measles transmission could still occur even among 100% immunized populations, as evidenced by the frequent outbreaks in the U.S. during the 1990s. Herd immunity—that is, sufficient vaccination coverage for a given infection (95% for measles)—should theoretically prevent the spread of the disease, yet it proved ineffective in this specific case and also for polio and pertussis. Measles vaccines do not guarantee lifelong immunity: the level of artificial antibodies is lower than that achieved through natural infection. In general, it can be said that vaccines cause an attenuated infection followed by inadequate protection; in fact, the concept of herd immunity was formulated based on observations of natural, not artificial, immunity. Furthermore, several statistical models have predicted a decline in immunity as early as 10 years after vaccination; therefore, high rates of vaccination, combined with a progressive decline in immunity, could lead to large-scale epidemics. This is what Levy’s statistical model predicted: by 2050, there will be a higher proportion of individuals susceptible to infection compared to the pre-vaccine era: Measles vaccination has altered the epidemiological characteristics of the disease, since those who were immunized in childhood will, once they reach adulthood, be vulnerable due to secondary vaccine failure—that is, the loss of immunity over time.
As further evidence supporting a cautious approach to mass vaccinations, consider that in the early 1990s, during an immunization campaign in Brazil using a modern combined measles-mumps-rubella vaccine, there was a significant increase in aseptic meningitis, made evident by the vaccination of a large population within a short timeframe.
Critical issues regarding the application of experimental protocols on a global scale are also evident in the recent case of the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic and primarily concern the indiscriminate use of swabs and the administration of vaccines. Swabs do not diagnose the disease nor do they determine the subject’s contagiousness. A 2023 study published in the International Journal of Vaccine Theory, Practice and Research questioned their use for mass diagnosis: for the first time in history, on a global scale, a positive result from a laboratory test served as the sole criterion for diagnosing a disease, failing to consider the full range of the patient’s symptoms. PCR, an acronym for Polymerase Chain Reaction, is a technique that allows for the amplification of genetic material, identifying viral fragments; however, it is not capable of diagnosing cases or infections: the diagnostic process should remain the prerogative of the physician and consist of a physical examination, a thorough medical history, and the possible prescription of specific laboratory tests. The study authors also demonstrated that PCR has no diagnostic value for confirming the presence of an infectious virus.
According to the classic CDC definition, a vaccine was a product that stimulates a person’s immune system to produce immunity against a specific disease. In September 2021, the definition of a vaccine was updated and became more broadly “a preparation used to stimulate an immune response against diseases.” An internal CDC email exchange, made public by the newspaper The Epoch Times, reveals officials’ urgency to update the definition as soon as possible, in light of the failure of COVID-19 vaccines to meet their objective—as they merely “stimulate” the immune system without ensuring immunity. Beyond these labels, mRNA vaccines meet the definition of gene therapies, as confirmed by the American Society of Gene and Cell Therapy. Gene therapies involve the use of genes to reprogram cells in order to prevent, alleviate, or cure diseases. Among the safety concerns regarding these therapies is the fear that certain viral vectors may acquire virulence during use, potentially causing damage to the genome and interfering with the mechanisms that regulate the cell cycle, thereby increasing the risk of malignant tumors. Finally, under the pretext of an emergency, the EU has exploited a specific regulatory tool, namely the conditional marketing authorization procedure, designed to allow the authorization of a drug in the shortest possible time, bypassing the normal timeframes required for thorough and safe testing.
A Sovereign Alternative
In light of the above, the resolutions by Robert Kennedy Jr., U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services, pave the way for a sovereign alternative. The United States, having withdrawn from the WHO in January 2026, has expressed opposition to the interference of private funders, such as GAVI, which collects public funds and allocates them to pharmaceutical companies, public-private partnership entities, and the WHO, thereby influencing global health management. The U.S. administration will also introduce a new vaccine adverse event reporting system to replace the current one (VAERS): according to a 2010 study conducted by the CDC, VAERS reportedly captured only 1% of vaccine-related injuries. Finally, the U.S., and thus Italy, have refrained from signing the Pandemic Treaty (adopted by WHO member states) which, under the pretext of “making the world safer from future pandemics”, transfers a portion of national sovereignty to an unelected body in the event of pandemics, adding another step toward a global health superstate. This trend was predictable since as early as 2022 the World Bank had set up a $1 billion fund for the creation of international vaccine passports, the so-called “pandemic passports,” developed by a coalition of Big Tech companies (Microsoft, Salesforce, and Oracle), known as the “Vaccination Credential Initiative.”
It is therefore essential to consolidate—and restore where necessary—national autonomy in health matters, to ensure the genuine protection of the public interest in our country and the proper conduct of the experimental and scientific method, which, based on objective evidence, does not maliciously pursue private interests of an economic, political, or social nature.
