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WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus Must Resign. Now
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US House COVID committee determined that the WHO acted on behalf of the Chinese CCP during the COVID crisis
On December 02, 2024, The US House of Representatives “Select Committee on the Coronavirus Pandemic” released a 500+ page report covering their findings from two years of investigations, which will be read into the congressional record 04 Dec 2024. Malone.News has previously covered and published the corresponding press release.
With this essay, we now turn to an underreported aspect of this report; collusion between the World Health Organization (under the direction of Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus) and the Central Communist Party of China (CCP) to advance the interests of the Chinese CCP at the expense of other WHO member states and global health. Based on these official US Congressional Select Committee findings, WHO Director General Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus must now resign as he has failed to fulfill and comply with both the scope and intent of the UN/WHO charter and also failed to comply with the version of the International Health Regulations guiding the activities of himself and the WHO in the context of the greatest infectious disease public health crisis ever encountered since the formation of the WHO. As the committee clearly documents, Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus’ and WHO’s corrupt and biased malfeasance and mismanagement directly contributed to exacerbating the severity of the initial phase of the Coronavirus Pandemic.
On the basis of this report, Malone.News calls upon President Elect of the United States Donald Trump to condemn the WHO and Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus for their corrupt and biased pro-CCP actions during the Coronavirus Pandemic. We specifically recommend:
- the immediate resignation of WHO Director-General Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus,
- to prioritize initiating the process of defunding and terminating US relations with the World Health Organization as soon as possible after assuming the office of POTUS,
- to withdraw from negotiations relating to the WHO “Pandemic Treaty,” and to
- to clearly and unambiguously indicate that the amendments to the International Health Regulations recently illegally approved under direction of WHO Director General Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus be declared non-binding, null and void due to a failure of Director General Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus to comply with WHO/UN policies and procedures for amending the International Health Regulations.
On 23 May 2017, The World Health Assembly elected Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus of Ethiopia as the new Director-General of the World Health Organization (WHO), during the Assembly’s 70th session. He began a five-year term on 1 July 2017 and succeed Margaret Chan in the role. The WHO has a long, rich, and well-known history of corruption.
Dr. Margaret Chan Fung Fu-chun is a Chinese-Canadian physician, who served as the Director-General of the World Health Organization (WHO) from 2006 to 2017. Chan previously served as Director of Health in the Hong Kong Government (1994–2003) and representative of the WHO Director-General for Pandemic Influenza and WHO Assistant Director-General for Communicable Diseases (2003–2006). In 2014, Forbes ranked her as the 30th most powerful woman in the world. In early 2018 she joined the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC). She was widely criticized for her handling of the 1997 H5N1 avian influenza outbreak and the 2003 SARS outbreak in Hong Kong, and the 2014-2016 West African Ebola outbreak.
I (Robert Malone) have had direct personal experience with Dr. Chan during the 2014-2016 West African Ebola outbreak, and witnessed her attempts to shake down my small biotech client at the time (New Link Genetics) for financial contributions to the WHO in exchange for supporting the advancement of the Ebola vaccine candidate then owned by New Link (purchased from Public Health Canada for slightly more than 100,000 USD), and which was later licensed to Merck Vaccines (with my assistance). This type of activity is considered standard WHO practice and accounts for at least some of the substantial dark funding that the WHO receives from the pharmaceutical industry and other special interests. Merck subsequently obtained FDA market authorization for the PHAC/New Link Ebola vaccine product after considerable developmental support was provided by US DoD/DTRA and HHS/BARDA. I personally lead the development of and served as primary author of the awarded USG contract bids that capitalized much of this Ebola vaccine support, and also served as initial capture and project manager. A US Army officer and leader of the DoD Ebola vaccine team (not myself) was subsequently appointed project manager for the USG Warp Speed Moderna “vaccine” project.
In contrast, the Ebola vaccine candidates supported and promoted by NIH/NIAID were unsuccessful. US DoD/DTRA was explicitly required by the Obama White House to allow HHS to take credit for that success due to political considerations relating to the involvement of DoD in exploiting vaccine surveillance activities to locate and then assassinate Osama Bin Ladin.
Dr. Tedros’ selection process began before September 2016, and the Assembly considered three nominees: Dr. Tedros, as he is known; David Nabarro (UK); and Sania Nishtar (Pakistan). The 70th WHA convened from 22-31 May 2017, in Geneva, Switzerland, and selected Dr. Tedros as Director-General WHO with the strong support of Mr. Bill Gates.
Previously, Tedros served as Chair of the Global Fund and of the Roll Back Malaria (RBM) Partnership Board (RBM) and created the Global Malaria Action Plan, which expanded the RBM’s work beyond Africa to Asia and Latin America. He also served as Ethiopia’s Minister of Foreign Affairs and Minister of Health (2012-2016 ). Tedros has links to the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (“TPLF”), a group designated as a terrorist organization by the Ethiopian government. Tedros was a senior capo for TPLF, a gangster mafia that ruled Ethiopia from 1991-2018. During that time, he served as Health Minister and Foreign Minister, cementing his credentials as a member of the inner circle of what was one of if not the most corrupt, brutal and genocidal regimes to set foot on this planet in the past 30 years. Tedros’ political career began by aligning with TPLF, a hard-left organization. He served as Ethiopia’s health minister and foreign minister under the TPLF-dominated ruling coalition. The Ethiopian government has turned against Tedros, accusing him of supporting TPLF and failing to show integrity and professionalism. In 2020, Ethiopia’s military accused Tedros Adhanom of supporting and trying to procure arms and diplomatic support for TPLF, which is fighting federal troops. The Ethiopian government has called on WHO to investigate Tedros’ actions and declined to back his re-election as WHO’s Director-General in May 2022.
The 75th meeting of the World Health Assembly reelected Dr. Tedros as WHO head (unopposed) by unanimous acclimation for a second term beginning 16 August 2022. No nation put up a candidate against him despite his controversial handling of the COVID-19 pandemic and close relationship to China (CCP).
When the Biden administration rejoined the WHO in January after President Trump had elected to withdraw from the WHO, Dr. Anthony Fauci said that Tedros was his “dear friend.” Tedros reportedly referred to Fauci as “my brother Tony.”
As reported at the time by Fox News
Craig Singleton, adjunct fellow at the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies, told Fox News, “The WHO Director General election stood as one of the first multilateral tests for the Biden administration, which has prioritized multilateralism and the United Nations in particular as a vehicle to promote U.S. interests on the world stage. The administration has put forward candidates for other international organization elections, such as the International Telecommunications Union, but has yet to provide an explanation for its decision to not challenge Tedros.”
Singleton continued, “This misstep raises serious questions about Washington’s efforts to push back against China’s growing U.N. activism, which includes Beijing’s efforts to promote leadership candidates throughout the UN system which are deferential to China’s interests.”
Observers say the U.S. lack of activism in the election process means it lost a major opportunity to wield influence over the future of the organization. The nomination deadline ended at the end of September.
This unfortunate history provides yet another example of the Biden/Harris administration’s actions that functionally supported Chinese CCP activities and agendas.
Dr. Tedros recently jammed through modifications of the International Health Regulations during the 77th meeting of the World Health Assembly without official US governmental objections while blatantly disregarding established protocol and process for legal amendment approvals, which Malone.News previously covered here.
The 78th meeting of the World Health Assembly is scheduled to convene in Geneva from Monday, May 19, 2025 to Tuesday, May 27, 2025, and approval of the proposed WHO/International “Pandemic Treaty” is anticipated during that meeting.
The following is a summary of the findings of the US House COVID committee findings regarding Tedros, WHO, and the proposed Pandemic Treaty. For detailed supporting text, please see the report section titled “The Implementation or Effectiveness of Any Federal Law or Regulation Applied, Enacted, or Under Consideration to Address the Coronavirus Pandemic and Prepare for Future Pandemics”, subsection “I. Overreliance on the World Health Organization,” pages 171 to 188.
Key findings from this section of the report include:
- The World Health Organization Failed to Uphold Its Mission and Caved to Chinese Communist Party Pressure.
- The WHO Ignored Taiwan Despite It Warning of COVID-19 in December 2019
- The WHO Denied Human-to-Human Spread of COVID-19 Based Solely on CCP Propaganda
- The WHO Prolonged Naming COVID-19 a PHEIC and Pandemic Because the CCP Insisted the Spread was Under Control
- The WHO Delayed and Denigrated Serious Countermeasures, Like Travel Restrictions, Because of CCP Pressure
- The WHO Continued to Praise CCP Failed Efforts to Combat the Pandemic, Despite a Globally Recognized the Cover-Up
- The WHO Failed to Condemn the CCP’s Aggressive Tactics Against Whistleblowers, Journalists, and Americans
- The WHO Posted False Information Regarding the Origins and Notification of COVID- 19’s Emergence
- The Chinese Communist Party Violated Articles Six and Seven of the International Health Regulations with No Repercussions.
- The CCP violated IHR Articles Six and Seven and needs to be held accountable.
- Article 6 of the IHR says that “[e]ach State Party shall notify WHO…within 24 hours…of all events which may constitute a public health emergency of international concern.”666 In order for an outbreak to require notification it must: (1) have serious public health consequences, (2) be unusual or unexpected, (3) have risk of international spread, and (4) pose significant risk to international trade.667 COVID-19 met all these criteria well before the WHO was formally notified of the outbreak by China. Further, Article 7 of the IHR states that if a “State Party has evidence of an unexpected or unusual public health event…it shall provide to WHO all relevant public health information.”668 The CCP failed to notify the WHO in a timely manner and subsequently concealed valuable information—harming the global response and leading to unnecessary illness and death.
- The World Health Organization’s Report Regarding the Origins of COVID-19 Was Incomplete, Misleading, and Parroted Chinese Communist Party Propaganda.
- Apart from the initial mismanagement of the virus, the WHO produced a report on the origins of COVID-19 that did nothing but continue the CCP’s propaganda.675 The WHO attempted to organize an investigation into the origins of the virus, yet from the very beginning it was evident the CCP was completely in control.
- The “Terms of Reference for the China Part” [hereinafter “Terms of Reference”] was a document that laid the ground rules for the WHO’s investigation. These terms were inherently flawed, provided significant discretion to the CCP, and continued to parrot CCP propaganda.676 Some examples included:
- Supporting CCP propaganda by stating the investigation would also evaluate the “possibility the virus may have silently” started outside of Wuhan.
- Dodging responsibility by “build[ing] on existing information and augment, rather than duplicate, ongoing [CCP]…efforts.”
- Phony scientific independence by giving the CCP final right of refusal on the “composition of the international team.”
- In January 2021, an international team traveled to Wuhan, China to review evidence of when and how the virus might have emerged.678 In March 2021, the WHO team released a report, entitled “WHO-Convened Global Study of Origins of SARS-CoV-2: China Part,” [hereinafter “WHO Report”] outlining four possible origin scenarios:
- direct zoonotic spillover is considered to be a possible-to-likely pathway;
- introduction through an intermediate host is considered to be a likely to very likely pathway;
- introduction through cold/food chain products is considered a possible pathway; [and]
- introduction through a laboratory incident was considered to be an extremely unlikely pathway.
- A significant restriction, was the CCP’s complete control over every single aspect of the investigation team’s itinerary and access to information. Upon arriving in Wuhan, the WHO team quarantined for two weeks in hotel rooms and were further restricted to certain areas of the hotel after quarantining.
- The investigators were restricted from dining with their Chinese counterparts, a seemingly insignificant detail, yet denied the WHO team the opportunity to engage in informal, human-to-human, conversation that can provide invaluable information.
- In Wuhan, Chinese scientists stated they had reviewed the medical records of approximately 76,000 patients from more than 200 medical institutions.692 When the WHO team requested raw numbers and data, Chinese scientists only presented analysis.
- Of the 76,000 medical records examined, 92 patients from October, November, and early December 2019 curiously showed symptoms suggesting COVID-19, yet none tested positive for antibodies according to medical records.
- The WHO Report’s conclusion included four hypotheses: that the virus jumped directly from animal to human; it spread via some (one not identified) intermediate animal; it was transmitted via the food chain, especially frozen products; or it came from a laboratory. These were concluded via a show of hands, in a room with Chinese counterparts—many of whom report directly to the CCP—that had already ruled out a lab accident and suggested the pandemic started somewhere outside of China. The theory that the virus came from a lab was voted as “extremely unlikely” and wasn’t recommended for further research.
- This was very clearly not a thorough, complete, or impartial investigation. The CCP Ministry of Foreign Affairs even admitted, “China firmly opposes certain countries’ attempts to…hold China accountable.” Yet, even though the rest of the world understands this report is a sham, the CCP presents it as the definitive assessment concerning the origins of COVID-19. So much so, the Chinese Ambassador to the U.S. sent the Select Subcommittee a letter attempting to obstruct the Select Subcommittee’s investigation into the origins of COVID-19, citing to the WHO origins report.
- The WHO team was not allowed to review any raw data or conduct their own analysis.
Malone News previously covered the original WHO COVID investigation findings here.
The original WHO report key findings included the following, which are contradicted by the House Select subcommittee’s findings. This quote clearly demonstrates that the WHO was compromised by placing the interests of the Chinese CCP above those of other member states and global health.
“For each of these possible pathways of emergence, the joint team conducted a qualitative risk assessment, considering the available scientific evidence and findings. It also stated the arguments against each possibility. The team assessed the relative likelihood of these pathways and prioritized further studies that would potentially increase knowledge and understanding globally. The joint team’s assessment of likelihood of each possible pathway was as follows:
• direct zoonotic spillover is considered to be a possible-to-likely pathway;
• introduction through an intermediate host is considered to be a likely to very likely pathway;
• introduction through cold/ food chain products is considered a possible pathway;
• introduction through a laboratory incident was considered to be an extremely unlikely pathway.”
The full 2021 WHO report can be downloaded from this link.
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ACIP voted to un-recommend the Hep B birth dose, but here’s the problem: they still can’t weigh the other side of the ledger
Sunday, something happened that has never happened in the history of American public health: ACIP voted 8-3 to un-recommend the universal birth dose of hepatitis B for babies born to mothers who test negative for the virus. After 34 years of jabbing every American newborn within hours of taking their first breath—regardless of whether their mother had hepatitis B—the committee finally acknowledged what 25 European countries figured out decades ago: it doesn’t make sense.
But watching this vote unfold, I couldn’t help but notice the absurdity of the debate itself. Committee members who opposed the change kept saying variations of the same thing: “We’ve heard ‘do no harm’ as a moral imperative. We are doing harm by changing this wording.” Another said “no rational science has been presented” to support the change.
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And therein lies the fundamental problem with ACIP—and with the entire vaccine regulatory apparatus in America. They literally cannot weigh risk versus benefit because they only have data on one side of the scale.
The Missing Side of the Ledger
When ACIP debates adding or removing a vaccine from the schedule, they can produce endless data on disease incidence. They can show you charts demonstrating how hepatitis B cases in infants dropped from thousands to single digits after 1991. They can model projected infections if vaccination rates decline. They have this data at their fingertips because tracking infectious disease is something our public health apparatus actually does.
But ask them to produce equivalent data on vaccine injury, and you’ll get silence. Not “the data shows injuries are rare.” Not “here’s our comprehensive tracking of adverse events.” Just… nothing. A void where information should be.
This is not an accident. This is by design.
The safety trials for Engerix-B and Recombivax HB—the two hepatitis B vaccines given to American newborns—monitored adverse events for four to five days after injection. That’s it. If your baby developed seizures on day six, or regressed into autism over the following months, or developed autoimmune disease in the following year—none of that would appear in the pre-licensure safety data.
And the post-market surveillance? VAERS is a voluntary reporting system that the CDC itself acknowledges captures only a tiny fraction of adverse events. A Harvard-funded study found it captures perhaps 1% of actual vaccine injuries. Vaccine court has paid out over $5 billion in claims while simultaneously being structured to make filing nearly impossible for average families.
So when Dr. Cody Meissner voted against removing the Hep B birth dose and said he saw “clear evidence of the benefits” but “not the harms,” he was accidentally revealing the entire rotten structure. Of course he doesn’t see the harms. Nobody is systematically looking for them.
The Invisibility of Vaccine Injury
Here’s what most people don’t understand about vaccine injury: it’s nothing like a gunshot wound.
If you shoot someone, the cause is obvious. There’s a bullet, a wound, blood, a clear mechanism of action visible to any observer. Even a medical examiner who’s never seen the victim before can determine cause of death.
Vaccine injury doesn’t work that way. When aluminum nanoparticles from a vaccine cross the blood-brain barrier via macrophages, when they lodge in brain tissue and trigger chronic neuroinflammation, when a child slowly regresses over weeks or months—there’s no bullet. There’s no smoking gun. There’s just a before and an after, and a desperate parent trying to explain to doctors that something changed.
This invisibility is the vaccine program’s greatest protection. Because the injury mechanism is complex and delayed, because it doesn’t leave an obvious wound, because it requires actually looking to find—and because no one in authority is looking—the injuries simply don’t exist in the official record.
I watched my own son Jamie regress after his vaccines. A healthy, developing toddler who lost his words, stopped making eye contact, and retreated into a world we couldn’t reach. My wife and I know what happened. Thousands of other parents know the same thing happened to their children. But because this type of injury doesn’t show up on a simple blood test, because there’s no autopsy finding that says “vaccine-induced encephalopathy,” ACIP members can sit in a room and say with straight faces that they don’t see evidence of harm.
They’re not lying. They literally can’t see it. Because no one is measuring it.
The Chicken Pox Conundrum
Here’s an example that illustrates the insanity of our current approach.
The varicella (chicken pox) vaccine was added to the schedule in 1995. It definitely reduces chicken pox cases. The data is clear on that front. Mission accomplished, right?
But what about the other side of the ledger?
Emerging research suggests that wild chicken pox infection provides some protective effect against brain cancers—particularly glioma, the most common type of primary brain tumor. Multiple studies have found that people who had chicken pox as children have significantly lower rates of brain cancer later in life. The hypothesis is that the immune response to wild varicella provides lasting immunological benefits that extend far beyond preventing itchy spots.
Meanwhile, the vaccine itself has been associated with increased rates of autoimmune conditions. Studies have linked varicella vaccination to higher rates of herpes zoster (shingles) outbreaks in younger age groups, to autoimmune disorders, to various adverse events that weren’t captured in the original short-term safety trials.
So what’s the true risk-benefit of the chicken pox vaccine? Does preventing a week of itchy discomfort in childhood justify potentially increased rates of brain cancer and autoimmune disease later in life?
ACIP can’t answer this question. They literally don’t have the data. They can show you chicken pox cases going down. They cannot show you a comprehensive analysis of long-term neurological and immunological outcomes in vaccinated versus unvaccinated populations, because that study has never been done.
And so they keep recommending the vaccine based on the only data they have—the disease prevention data—while remaining willfully blind to consequences they’ve never bothered to measure.
The ACIP Paradox
Sunday’s vote was historic, but it also revealed the fundamental paradox of vaccine regulation in America.
The committee members who voted to remove the universal Hep B birth dose recommendation did so largely based on comparative evidence from Europe, parental concerns, and the basic logic that vaccinating a 12-hour-old baby for a sexually transmitted disease their mother doesn’t have makes no medical sense. They were right to do so.
But the committee members who voted against the change weren’t wrong either, from their perspective. They looked at the only data they have—disease prevention data—and concluded that removing the recommendation could lead to more hepatitis B cases. And within their limited framework, they’re correct.
The problem is the framework itself.
True risk-benefit analysis requires data on both risks AND benefits. ACIP has comprehensive data on benefits (disease prevention) and virtually no data on risks (vaccine injury). So every decision they make is fundamentally flawed from the start.
When Dr. Joseph Hibbeln complained that “no rational science has been presented” to support changing the recommendations, he was inadvertently indicting the entire system. Of course no comprehensive vaccine injury data was presented—such data doesn’t exist because no one has been willing to collect it.
This is like asking someone to make an informed financial decision while only showing them potential profits and hiding all possible losses. Of course the decision will be skewed. Of course you’ll end up with a bloated portfolio of high-risk investments that look great on paper.
The Real Reform
If RFK Jr. and the new HHS leadership want to actually fix the vaccine program, they need to understand that removing individual vaccines or making them “optional” is just rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic.
The real reform is creating the data infrastructure that should have existed from the beginning.
We need a comprehensive, long-term, vaccinated-versus-unvaccinated health outcomes study. Not a five-day safety trial. A multi-decade tracking of neurological, immunological, and developmental outcomes across populations with varying vaccination status. Florida just eliminated all vaccine mandates—that state alone could provide the data we need within ten years if someone had the courage to actually collect it.
We need a vaccine injury surveillance system that actually captures adverse events. Not a voluntary reporting system that misses 99% of injuries. An active surveillance system with trained clinicians looking for the kinds of delayed, complex injuries that vaccines actually cause.
We need accountability for manufacturers. The 1986 National Childhood Vaccine Injury Act removed all liability from vaccine makers—and predictably, the vaccine schedule exploded afterward while safety research stagnated. Why would any company invest in safety when they can’t be sued for injuries?
Without this data, every ACIP meeting will be the same performance we watched this week: members confidently citing disease prevention data while admitting they can’t see evidence of harm—not because harm doesn’t exist, but because no one is looking for it.
What Comes Next
Sunday’s vote was a crack in the wall. For the first time, an American regulatory body acknowledged that perhaps vaccinating every newborn within hours of birth for a disease primarily transmitted through sex and IV drug use doesn’t make sense when the mother has already tested negative.
But the forces of institutional inertia are already mobilizing. The American Academy of Pediatrics is “disappointed.” The American Medical Association is calling for the CDC to reject the recommendation. The pharmaceutical industry—which collects over $225 million annually from Hep B birth doses alone—will fight to restore the universal recommendation.
They will cite the same data they always cite: disease prevention data. Cases prevented. Infections avoided. Lives saved—theoretically.
They will not cite vaccine injury data, because that data doesn’t exist in any comprehensive form. They will not present long-term health outcomes in vaccinated versus unvaccinated children, because those studies have been actively avoided for decades. They will not acknowledge the thousands of families who have watched their children regress after vaccination, because those injuries aren’t captured in any official database.
And this is why ACIP will always be hamstrung. Until we build the data infrastructure to actually measure vaccine injury—to put real numbers on the other side of the ledger—every vaccine decision will be based on incomplete information. Every “risk-benefit analysis” will be a fraud, because we’re only measuring half the equation.
The hepatitis B birth dose vote was a small victory. But the larger battle—for actual science, for complete data, for true informed consent—that battle is just beginning.
And until we win it, ACIP will continue making decisions in the dark, confidently citing evidence of benefits while remaining deliberately blind to the harms they’ve never bothered to measure.
About the author
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J.B. Handley is the proud father of a child with Autism. He spent his career in the private equity industry and received his undergraduate degree with honors from Stanford University. His first book, How to End the Autism Epidemic, was published in September 2018. The book has sold more than 75,000 copies, was an NPD Bookscan and Publisher’s Weekly Bestseller, broke the Top 40 on Amazon, and has more than 1,000 Five-star reviews. Mr. Handley and his nonspeaking son are also the authors of Underestimated: An Autism Miracle and co-produced the film SPELLERS, available now on YouTube.
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We’ve all seen the headlines — such as the below — loudly proclaiming that due to climate change the insurance industry is in crisis, and even that total economic collapse may soon follow. For instance, since 2019, the New York Times, one of the primary champions of this narrative, has published more than 1,250 articles on climate change and insurance.
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Climate advocates have embraced the idea of a climate-fueled insurance crisis as it neatly ties together the hyping of extreme weather and alleged financial consequences for ordinary people. The oft-cited remedy to the claimed crisis is, of course, to be found in energy policy: “The only long-term solution to preserve an insurable future is to transition from fossil fuels and other greenhouse-gas-emitting industries.”
However, it is not just climate advocates promoting the notion that climate change is fundamentally threatening the insurance industry. A climate-risk industrial complex has emerged in this space and a lot of money is being made by a lot of people. The virtuous veneer of climate advocacy serves to discourage scrutiny and accountability.
In this series, I take a deep dive into the “crisis,” its origins, its politics, and its tenuous relationship with actual climate science.¹ Today, I kick things off by sharing three fundamental, and perhaps surprising, facts that go a long way to explaining why insurance prices have increased and who benefits:
- Property/casualty insurance is raking in record profits;
- Insurance underwriting returns vary year-to-year but show no trend;
- “Climate” risk assessments are unreliable and a cause of higher insurance prices.
Grab a cup of coffee, settle in, and let’s go . . .
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Property/casualty insurance is raking in record profits
This year is shaping up to be an extremely profitable year for the property/casualty (P/C) insurance industry. In a report covering the first six months of 2025, the National Association of Insurance Commissioners (NAIC) shares the good news (emphasis added):
Despite heavy catastrophe losses, including the costliest wildfires on record, the U.S. Property & Casualty (P&C) industry recorded its best mid-year underwriting gain in nearly 20 years.
In the second half of 2025, returns got even better for the P/C industry. According to a new report from S&P Global Intelligence, as reported by Carrier Management (emphases added):
For U.S. P/C insurers, it just doesn’t get any better than this. . . With a combined ratio of 89.1 for third-quarter 2025, the U.S. property/casualty insurance industry had its best quarter in at least a quarter of a century—and maybe longer, S&P Market Intelligence said.
Taking a longer view, the extremely profitable 2025 follows significant industry profitability in 2023 and 2024, according to the National Association of Insurance Commissioners (NAIC), as shown in the figure below.
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What accounts for the high profits?
The NAIC explains:
Strong premium growth, driven largely by rate increases, coupled with abating economic inflation . . . Net income nearly doubled compared to last year, attributed to the underwriting profit and healthy investment returns.
Below, I’ll pick up the issue of rate increases and explore one big reason why they have occurred.
If there is a P/C insurance crisis, it may be in figuring out how to explain its impressive returns at the same time that the climate lobby is telling everyone that the industry is collapsing.
Insurance underwriting returns vary year-to-year but show no trend
The P/C industry makes money primarily in two ways — underwriting of insurance policies and investment income. Typically, insurance companies seek to break even, or lose little, on insurance underwriting and earn profits on investment income.
Warren Buffet, in his 2009 letter to Berkshire Hathaway shareholders, explained concisely how the P/C industry works:
Our property-casualty (P/C) insurance business has been the engine behind Berkshire’s growth and will continue to be. It has worked wonders for us. We carry our P/C companies on our books at $15.5 billion more than their net tangible assets, an amount lodged in our “Goodwill” account. These companies, however, are worth far more than their carrying value– and the following look at the economic model of the P/C industry will tell you why.
Insurers receive premiums upfront and pay claims later. In extreme cases, such as those arising from certain workers’ compensation accidents, payments can stretch over decades. This collect-now, pay-later model leaves us holding large sums– money we call “float”– that will eventually go to others. Meanwhile, we get to invest this float for Berkshire’s benefit. Though individual policies and claims come and go, the amount of float we hold remains remarkably stable in relation to premium volume. Consequently, as our business grows, so does our float.
If premiums exceed the total of expenses and eventual losses, we register an underwriting profit that adds to the investment income produced from the float. This combination allows us to enjoy the use of free money– and, better yet, get paid for holding it. Alas, the hope of this happy result attracts intense competition, so vigorous in most years as to cause the P/C industry as a whole to operate at a significant underwriting loss. This loss, in effect, is what the industry pays to hold its float. Usually this cost is fairly low, but in some catastrophe-ridden years the cost from underwriting losses more than eats up the income derived from use of float.
The figure below, using data from the Insurance Information Institute, shows the underwriting performance of the P/C industry from 2004 to 2024.
The time series shows lots of ups and downs, but no trend — by design, as Buffet explained. There are certainly no signs of an underwriting crisis, much less indications of a coming collapse. The P/C industry looks both well-managed and healthy.
“Climate” risk assessments are unreliable and a cause of higher insurance prices
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If profits are high and underwriting is steady, then what then accounts for increasing insurance prices — which, as of the end of 2024, increased 29 consecutive quarters in a row (above)?
A big part of the answer is Climate Change. But not how you might think.
A decade ago, Mark Carney — then Governor of the Bank of England and today Prime Minister of Canada — gave an influential speech titled, Breaking the Tragedy of the Horizon – climate change and financial stability.
Carney argued that the insurance industry was at risk due to changes in the climatology of extreme events that were not properly understood by experts in the industry:
[T]here are some estimates that currently modelled losses could be undervalued by as much as 50% if recent weather trends were to prove representative of the new normal. . . Such developments have the potential to shift the balance between premiums and claims significantly, and render currently lucrative business non-viable.
Coincident with Carney’s 2015 speech, the Bank of England released a report on the impacts of climate change on the insurance industry, and noted that conventional catastrophe modeling did not effectively consider a changing climate. The Bank of England kicked off a longstanding campaign to convince people that extreme weather events were changing dramatically in the near term.
Subsequently, in 2019, the Bank of England required firms to assess their “climate risks.” This guidance was updated last week. In (a coordinated) parallel effort, national and international organizations focused on “climate risk” to the financial sector started multiplying — such as the Climate Financial Risk Forum and the Network for Greening the Financial System.
The climate-risk industry was born circa 2019.
There is an incredible story to be told here (and Jessica Weinkle is the go-to expert), but for today, the key takeaways are that (a) the notion of “climate risk” to finance, including insurance, led to the creation of a “climate risk” industry, and (b) within this industry, a new family of risk assessment vendors emerged, promising to satisfy the new demands for climate risk disclosure and risk modeling.
The Global Association of Risk Professionals (GARP) explains:
As this [“climate risk”] was a new discipline for most financial firms, many turned to third party providers (“vendors”) to help them with different areas of expertise. There are now many physical risk data vendors, which offer a variety of services to financial institutions. While vendor offerings often sound alike — providing projections of how physical risk could evolve for locations across a range of risks and climate scenarios — they can differ significantly in terms of features, approach, or suitability for specific needs, and the underlying models that these providers use differ in methodology and assumptions.
GARP just published an incredibly important study that assessed how 13 different “climate risk” vendors modeled physical risk and risk of loss across 100 individual structures around the world.²
The results are shocking — given how they are used in industry, but should not be surprising — given what we know about modeling.
There is absolutely no consensus across vendors about “climate risk” in terms of either physical risks or risks of loss.
The figure below shows, for 100 different properties around the world, the differences in modeled 200-year flood risk across the 13 vendors, as refelcted in modeled flood heights. The maximum difference among the properties across vendors is about 12 meters and the median difference is about 2.7 meters — These are huge differences.
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In terms of risk of loss, the models have an even greater spread. The figure below shows that for a modeled 200-year flood, 10 properties are modeled by at least one vendor to have total losses (100%) while another vendor models the same properties to have no losses, under the exact same event. The median difference between minimum and maximum modeled loss ratio is 30% — Another huge number.³
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Insurance pricing does not scale linearly with increasing modeled loss ratios. Consider that the difference between a modeled 10% loss ratio and a 40% loss ratio (i.e., the 30% median difference across vendors from above) might result in a 10x increase in insurance rates. Risk adverse insurers have incentives to price at the most extreme modeled loss.
Model inaccuracies, unceratinties, spread, and ambiguity are feature not flaws when it comes to making money. “Climate risk” modeling has resulted in a financial windfall not just for the newly created climate analytics industry, but also for insurers and reinsurers who have seen the envelope of modeled losses expand. The need for new models, of questionabl fidelity, are necessary to satisfy industry guidance and government regulators.
The net result has been a seemingly scientific justification for increasing insurance rates.⁴
There are of course real changes in physical risk, exposure, and vulnerability as well as the regulatory and political contexts within which the P/C industry must operate. The discipline of catastrophe modeling has long integrated these factors to assess risks. As insurance policies and reinsurance contracts are typically implemented on a one-year basis, and this well-positioned to incorporate changng perceptions of risk, this series will explore why a new “climate risk” assessment industry was even needed in the first place.
What about that “climate risk”? THB readers will be very familiar with the science of extreme events and climate change, which, as reported here, happens to be consistent with both the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and those in the legacy catastrophe modeling community.
One of those modeling firms, Verisk, gets the last word for today:
We estimate about 1% of year-on-year increases in AAL [Average Annual Loss] are attributable to climate change. Such small shifts can easily get lost behind other sources of systematic loss increase discussed in this report, such as inflation and exposure growth. The random volatility from internal climate variability also dwarfs the small positive climate change signal.
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