President Trump announced that the United States is terminating its relationship with the World Health Organization. My only question is why it took this long.
There are cynical but ultimately effective utilitarian arguments for why we stay in corrupt international organizations such as the United Nations. There are outright correct ones for why we remain in the World Trade Organization, ones that don’t require a modicum of ideological bent. But the coronavirus pandemic has made clear that our return on investment for funding the WHO was hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars and more than 100,000 lives.
Trump talks a big game, so much so that a mere threat to defund the WHO, thus depriving it of 22%, a plurality of its aggregate funding, wouldn’t prove leverage enough to influence the WHO’s behavior. Beijing bought the last two WHO director-generals and preferred policy changes with them. For 14 years, the WHO has fulfilled the political demands of the Chinese Communist Party, lauding dictatorial allies such as North Korea and Syria while silencing positive reports on Israel. Politics alone wouldn’t constitute reason enough to justify leaving the WHO if it actually achieved crucial public health aims, but the pandemic has proven that politics now actively inhibit whatever good the WHO once did.
Consider, WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus didn’t just spend months lavishing the CCP with praise for its “transparency” and “leadership.” On Jan. 14, the WHO promulgated the Chinese lie that there was no evidence of human-to-human transmission of the novel coronavirus, a crucial falsehood that prevented other countries from taking the early and proper precautions such as vital travel bans and securing PPE. The WHO declined to deem it a pandemic until March 11, when already over 100,000 cases had been confirmed worldwide. The WHO still refuses to concede that it blatantly lied about the efficacy of masks in preventing coronavirus transmission, likely to save more masks for China. To this day, the WHO maintains that people without the coronavirus should not wear masks unless they’re treating patients with it. American legal guidance differs for a reason. We now don’t just have observational evidence of the success of mask-wearing in South Korea and Japan and evidence about the efficacy of masks against other similarly sized viruses, but also new science that shows just 80% mask-wearing could plummet coronavirus infection rates to one-twelfth of its current rate.
The WHO has spent years letting political interests corrupt its dedication to science, notably including crackpot traditional Chinese medicine in the latest version of the International Statistical Classification of Diseases and Related Health Problems, a move that was critically panned by the scientific community at large. But the coronavirus has proven that the WHO’s political fealty to China isn’t just an unsavory side effect but an active hindrance to its ability to do its job. After all, the WHO’s primary practical application is data aggregation and information distribution. If we can’t even trust it to get or tell the facts correctly, what purpose does it serve other than to legitimize the Chinese government?
Well, none. Trump is right to say the quiet part out loud and to sever ties with this farce of an investigation. If the WHO wants our money again, it can oust Tedros, stick it to Beijing, and earn us again. Until then, Trump should redirect the funds to other NGOs that actually help people on the ground.
