Slip Of The Tongue? Did WHO Chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus really said covid-19 vaccines “kill children”?

Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, Director-General of the World Health Organization (WHO), held a press briefing in Geneva on Covid-19 vaccines and vaccinations on December 20, 2021. Another performance, of which there were a great many over the past year. It could have gone unnoticed, if not for just one phrase that had the effect of an exploding bomb – “kill children”.

Tedros Adhanom Gebreyesus said literally the following:

“We see, some countries are using to give boosters (additional shots of the Covid-19 vaccine) to kill children, which is not right.” 

Sounds unbelievable? Listen to yourselves: 

What was it? What does all this mean?

To begin with, no one disputes the authenticity of the video. The video has not undergone any editing. You can find, watch and listen to a longer video in which Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus first reads a long text from a piece of paper, and then speaks without a piece of paper.

All the explanations for what happened by WHO officials and unofficial defenders of Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, somehow revolve around his poor knowledge of English.

Version No. 1

Its defenders insist that English is not the first language for the head of WHO. Because Tedros Adhanom Gebreyesus is Ethiopian by birth. Therefore, he knows very little English.

Version No. 2

All the denials found on the fact-checking sites link to an unnamed WHO representative who tried to explain what happened are as follows:

“Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus “stuck on the first syllable of the word “chil” and it sounded like “kil”. Then he pronounced the same syllable correctly right after that, and it sounded like ‘kill children’. Any other interpretation of that is 100% wrong.”

Context

Of course, if you carefully study the speech of Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus on the WHO website in order to understand the context, it becomes clear that its head, it seems, really made a reservation. The phrase “its better to focus on those groups who have the risk of severe disease and death, rather than, as we see, some countries are using to give boosters to children, which is not right” (that is, without the word kill) looks like more logical.

Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus once again drew the attention of the world community to the lack of equality in the distribution of vaccines in the world. Someone is already injecting additional (booster) doses of Covid-19 vaccines (third, or even fourth) with might and main, while others do not even have enough vaccines to inoculate the population with two doses. 

Therefore, he said that it is better to give additional, booster, doses of vaccines to people over 60 years old who are at risk of serious illness and death, and not injecting them to children.

Conclusions

Yes, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus is not a native speaker of English, that’s how it is. But these defenders forget to tell the public that in 1992 he graduated from the master’s degree at the University of London, and in 2000 received his Ph.D. from the University of Nottingham (Great Britain). That is, for quite a long time he lived and studied in the country of the founders of the English language. 

In addition, from 2012 to 2016, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus was the Minister of Foreign Affairs of Ethiopia. And finally, he has headed WHO since 2017.

So the head of WHO has everything in order with the English language. That, in general, can be heard on the video.

The explanation about a banal slip of the tongue looks very logical, up until you personally watch the video where you can clearly see and hear that Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus pronounces the entire phrase “We see, some countries are using to give boosters to kill children, which is not right” exactly, smoothly, and fluently, in one breath. He neved stumbled or got stuck anywhere, without correcting anything.

So this explanation looks, well, very artificial and even far-fetched. The claim that Covid-19 vaccines are safe is not true, to put it mildly. Because Covid-19 vaccines can pose even a greater threat to those vaccinated than the disease itself. 

More than 2.5 million side effects of Covid-19 vaccines have been recorded in the world – dozens of times more than many well-known vaccines and drugs. 

Heart problems have become widespread since the Covid-19 vaccination . Moreover, heart problems are most often found in young people (see the graph “Preliminary reports of myocarditis / pericarditis to VAERS after mRNA Covid-19 vaccination by age and dose number”).