Senators Chris Murphy (D-CT) and Mitt Romney (R-UT) have introduced a "Global Health Security Act" creating "a new directorate" ostensibly "empowered to press the preventative levers that can protect the nation."  More accurately, the bill (not yet assigned a senate number at this writing) requires the U.S. to adopt and implement the World Health Organization's "Global Health Security Agenda" (GHSA) across the government.  The GHSA includes a detailed set of "International Health Regulations" (IHR) meant to ensure prompt and effective responses to international health incidents.  The Murphy-Romney legislation will embed the IHR into U.S. health policy and ultimately into our lives and homes.

Unfortunately, those International Health Regulations have already failed in the case of COVID-19 (and to be clear, not through any fault or omission of the United States).  The IHR procedures unequivocally and explicitly required China to report immediately the existence of the outbreak and to cooperate fully and transparently in its international investigation (emphasis added):

"Notification is now based on the identification within a State Party’s territory of an 'event that may constitute a public health emergency of international concern' (PHEIC). This non-disease specific definition of notifiable events expands the scope of the IHR (2005) to include any novel or evolving risk to international public health..."

"While any urgent event can be assessed for notification, the decision instrument identifies two groups of diseases which raise particular concerns: Group 1: A single case of smallpox, poliomyelitis due to wild type poliovirus, human influenza caused by a new subtype and severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) must be immediately notified to WHO, irrespective of the context in which it occurs."

We now know this protocol was utterly ineffective.  A deceptive nation combined with an incompetent agency shows how weak these international protocols really are.

But equally worrisome, the nature of health-related protocols necessarily touch every aspect of our lives.  While the International Health Regulations are perhaps benign today, when made part of our mandatory, enforceable national policy, they become avenues for external interference in our lives and affairs.

Do we really want the corrupt United Nations, and the particularly inept World Health Organization, dictating this country's health policy, and more?  Recall that Ezekiel Emanuel, M.D., Ph.D., as chair of the University of Pennsylvania's department of medical ethics and health policy, and one of the leading figures in creating Obamacare, has been open about limiting the human lifespan to 75 years.  Recall also that "gun violence" is regarded as a "public health issue" by gun control activists.  These and other examples would eventually find "international consensus" an agreeable path to implementation and enforcement in the United States.

Bottom line, Murphy and Romney may be simply on a fool's errand, grasping at straws to make a showing in a time of crisis.  Or, they are bald opportunists, trying to introduce back-door globalist imperatives in the way they favor most: more government.  Knowing these two, it's probably both.

Rybarczyk is an observer of politics from Connecticut.