In the silence of power’s corridors, while public attention is skillfully distracted by daily urgencies, a narrative unfolds that could redefine the very concept of health sovereignty. The world health organization’s pandemic treaty represents far more than a simple international agreement: it mirrors a profound metamorphosis in the relationships between citizens, states, and supranational bodies—a disquieting reflection of what we might call the new “architecture of biopolitical control.”
Italy, like the other 193 WHO member countries, stands today at a crucial crossroads, called to decide by may 2025 whether to cede part of its decision-making autonomy in health matters to an entity whose transparency and impartiality have repeatedly been called into question. This transition, which the Italian government seems to want to navigate on tiptoe, avoiding in-depth public debate, deserves instead to be illuminated by the light of collective reflection.
The fragility of memory and institutional amnesia
There is something profoundly disturbing in the way institutions seem to proceed with selective amnesia, forgetting the lessons of the recent past. Like a river flowing while ignoring the debris left by the previous flood, the approach to the new national pandemic plan 2025-2028 appears built upon foundations of a narrative never truly questioned.
The measures adopted during the COVID-19 pandemic—some of which proved not only ineffective but actively harmful, especially for the younger generations—have not been subjected to the critical analysis that should be the foundation of any authentic scientific progress. The psychological damage inflicted upon the new generations, the social fractures created, the economic consequences of prolonged lockdowns: all this seems to vanish in the mist of a rhetoric that looks only forward, never turning to contemplate the ruins left behind.
The evolution of the vaccine concept: a semantic and technical metamorphosis
Particularly emblematic is the evolution of the very definition of “vaccine,” which has undergone a significant semantic transformation, abandoning the goal of immunization from infection to embrace the vaguer concept of “protection.” This linguistic metamorphosis is not a marginal detail but the reflection of a paradigmatic shift that opens scenarios previously unimaginable.
The new self-replicating mRNA vaccines perhaps represent the most unsettling frontier of this techno-scientific evolution. Unlike their predecessors, these products contain genetic instructions not only for the synthesis of the viral protein but also for an enzyme capable of amplifying the RNA. It is as if we had introduced into our bodies not simply a messenger but a narrator endowed with the capacity to indefinitely multiply its own story, with consequences that could propagate well beyond the currently visible horizon of our scientific understanding.
The scarcity of available information on the long-term safety of these technologies casts a disturbing shadow over the reassurances offered by authorities. How can we define as “safe” that which has not had time to reveal its profound nature? The haste with which these innovations are pushed toward authorization seems to respond more to market logic than to that of scientific prudence.
The eloquent silences of power
In the labyrinth of these considerations, the silence of the Italian government appears as a tangible presence, a void that speaks louder than any declaration. The absence of an in-depth public debate on the pandemic treaty is symptomatic of a broader tendency: the progressive erosion of spaces for democratic confrontation on issues that touch the very essence of our freedom of choice in health matters.
What interests lurk behind this reticence? Who benefits from such far-reaching decisions being made away from the eyes of citizens, in the shadows of international negotiations whose details remain shrouded in mist? The question is not rhetorical but the beating heart of a concern that should cut across the entire political spectrum.
The contested credibility of the WHO
The question of the WHO’s credibility represents a crucial node in this reflection. Can an organization whose funding depends largely on private donors, some of whom have direct interests in the pharmaceutical sector, truly guarantee the impartiality that should be the foundation of every decision in health matters?
The conflicts of interest that permeate the ecosystem of international health organizations are not mere speculations but documented realities that deserve far greater attention than they have received so far. The choice of some countries to distance themselves from the WHO should not be dismissed as simple isolationism but analyzed as a signal of the need for a profound reform of these bodies.
Toward a new collective awareness
The path toward global health management that combines effectiveness and respect for national sovereignty, security and individual freedom, requires a collective awareness that can only arise from an open and transparent debate. Italy, with its heritage of humanistic and scientific culture, could and should play a leading role in this process, proposing an alternative model to the technocratic one that seems to prevail.
The real challenge is not to choose between isolationism and global integration but to imagine and build forms of international cooperation that do not sacrifice the fundamental principles of self-determination and democratic transparency on the altar of efficiency.
A call for reflection
In this complex scenario, every citizen is called to a responsibility that transcends traditional political affiliations: that of demanding clarity on decisions that could redefine the relationship between state and individual in health matters. The WHO pandemic treaty is not a technical issue to be delegated to experts but a terrain for political confrontation in the highest sense of the term, concerning the very vision of the society we wish to build.
The time that separates us from the may 2025 deadline should be used not to accelerate uncritical adherence but to deepen a debate that so far has been too timid and marginal. Only through this process can we avoid decisions about our health future being made in the shadows, away from the vigilant gaze of that active citizenship which is the beating heart of any authentic democracy.
The true pandemic against which we must fight, perhaps, is that of indifference and passive delegation to technostructures increasingly distant from common feeling. It is in this space of renewed awareness that we can cultivate the seeds of an approach to global health that does not sacrifice freedom on the altar of security imposed from above.