Communist Party member new head of WHO group

A DECADES-LONG member of the Communist Party of Britain has been appointed as chairman of one of the World Health Organisation’s advisory groups.

Prof Susan Michie, director of the Centre for Behaviour Change at University College London, will chair the WHO’S Technical Advisory Groups (TAG) on Behavioural Insights and Sciences for Health.

The UCL academic, who is a frequent contributor on the BBC and ITV, has been a member of the Communist Party of Britain for more than 40 years.

She made headlines last year after she advocated for stringent Covid-19 restrictions on life in the UK and “maximum suppression” of the virus around the world, including saying that face masks and social distancing measures should continue “forever”.

During the pandemic, she would regularly make recommendations about coronavirus restrictions due to her position as a member of a sub-group for the Government’s SAGE advisory body. She told Channel 5 in June 2021: “Behaviour of social distancing… Wearing face masks… We will need to keep this going in the long term and that will be good not only for Covid, but also to reduce other diseases”.

Interrupted by a follow-up question about how long she thought the measures should continue, the professor of health psychology said: “I think forever, to some extent.”

Both SAGE and Independent SAGE faced criticism for over-reliance on modelling, which were repeatedly shown to be wrong, when recommending Covid restrictions to the Government.

The WHO’S advisory group on Behavioural Insights and Sciences for Health consists of “renowned experts” that represent a “broad range of disciplines,” including economics, anthropology and psychology, according to the organisation’s website.

“The group provides expert advice for the development of a road map for WHO to define a mechanism to systematically include behavioural evidence in its work and in national health policies and programme planning,” the online description adds.

The experts will make recommendations to the organisation on a regional and international level.

Many people expressed their frustration at Prof Michie’s appointment, with one Twitter user saying: “I thought the WHO was an appalling discredited organisation before this announcement. It is now even worse if that was possible!”