Trump Withdraws U.S. From World Health Organization Over COVID-19 Mismanagement

President Donald Trump signed an executive order on his first day in office to remove the United States from the World Health Organization (WHO). The U.S. sent $1.284 billion to the WHO in 2022-2023, which is 15% of the total funds received by the organization that year. Germany is the second biggest contributor with $856 million, while the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation came in third with $830 million in contributions.

President Trump sent a letter of intent to withdraw from the WHO in 2020 to Director-General Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, citing the organization’s mismanagement of the COVID-19 pandemic. The WHO Constitution requires a one-year notice for withdrawal, so it didn’t officially take effect. President Joe Biden signed a retraction of Trump’s letter when he took office on January 20, 2021.

The new executive order criticizes the WHO for “its failure to adopt urgently needed reforms, and its inability to demonstrate independence from the inappropriate political influence of WHO member states.” President Trump, during his first term, said the WHO is “nothing more than a corrupt globalist scam” that “disgracefully covered the tracks of the Chinese Communist Party.”

The latest executive order revokes Biden’s retraction and states, “The WHO continues to demand unfairly onerous payments from the United States, far out of proportion with other countries’ assessed payments.  China, with a population of 1.4 billion, has 300 percent of the population of the United States, yet contributes nearly 90 percent less to the WHO.”

Member states have two types of contributions to the WHO, including assessed and voluntary contributions. China contributed $115 million in assessed contributions and a total of $157 million including voluntary contributions. This equates to less than an eighth of the total contributions the WHO received from the U.S.

Vinay Prasad, MD MPH, applauded the move and said “The WHO, throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, failed in their duty. They were not a science-based organization. They, in fact, were a politically motivated organization. They made opinions seem like they were based in science when they were really just things that they believed in. Those opinions that they turned into recommendations were the opinions that were shared by people of a certain political persuasion and they advanced a certain political agenda masquerading as science.”

Prasad explained that the WHO made recommendations for social distancing, lockdowns, and masks without providing scientific studies to support these guidelines. He added that the U.S. has its own public health agency, the CDC, to provide health recommendations.

Dr. Tess Lawrie was an external consultant to the WHO from 2012 to 2021. She appeared on The HighWire in December 2023 to discuss her concerns about the WHO’s attempted power grab via the pandemic treaty. Lawrie is the CEO of the World Council for Health (WCH), which wrote an open letter to President Trump to call for a global investigation into WHO Collaboration Centres.

The WCH first congratulated President Trump for taking the step to withdraw the U.S. from the WHO. The letter continued, “World Council for Health is calling for an Urgent Independent Global Review and Investigation of the World Health Organization and its established collaborations and binding agreements with so-called WHO Collaborating Centres.”

There are 800 of these centres worldwide and 72 in the United States. The letter states, “Of these centres. 18 active CDC, WHO CC’s, 3 active NIH, WHO CC’s and 1 active FDA, WHO CC.”

The WHO guide to collaborating centres states, “WHO CC’s are institutions that have been solid WHO allies for years, helping WHO to implement its mandated work and achieve its current goals”

One of these collaborating centres is the Enteric Diseases Laboratory Branch at the Division of Foodborne, Waterborne and Environmental Diseases, at the National Center for Emerging Zoonotic and Infectious Diseases. The purpose is “surveillance, epidemiology, and control of foodborne diseases and enteric, fungal pathogens.” One report from this CDC lab does not mention any collaboration with the WHO, but provides data regarding food-borne illnesses. The HighWire reported last week about misleading statements made by the CDC in regards to the dangers of raw milk based on the complete outbreak data provided by the agency.

One NIH collaborating centre is for “emerging infectious disease response research and preparedness.” One of the stated goals is “At WHO’s request, and in collaboration with WHO’s R&D Blueprint, provide ongoing expertise, guidance and training to help develop response research preparedness tools such as clinical research protocols, case report forms, operational manuals, and standard operating procedures to facilitate the rigorous assessment of medical countermeasures, including diagnostics, vaccines, and therapeutics, to address emerging infectious diseases (EID).”

The WCH letter states “To truly exit the World Health Organization, it will be essential to have both awareness and transparent knowledge of the binding agreements made with the USA WHO Collaborating Centres and USA GOARN (Global Outbreak Alert and Response Network) Partner Institutions with the World Health Organization, as a matter of urgency and priority.”

The WHO responded to President Trump’s executive order and hopes the U.S. will reconsider the decision. Former CDC director Tom Frieden said “The bottom line is that withdrawing from the WHO makes Americans and the world less safe.” Others who oppose the U.S.’s withdrawal from the WHO say that the organization is necessary to prevent the worldwide spread of diseases.

Prasad, Lawrie, and others argue that the WHO has not been making recommendations based on science and thus shouldn’t be receiving funding from U.S. taxpayers.

When Lawrie appeared on The HighWire, she described the WHO’s attempt to gain power via the pandemic treaty. She said, “It clearly shows that the WHO will be given legally binding authority to declare PHEICS (Public Health Emergency of International Concern) and be in charge of the self-perpetuating pandemic industry or emergency industry because they get to declare the quarantines, the interventions, the vaccines…”

She also described the WHO’s plan to digitalize the world via 5g technology, which is “part and parcel of this globalist agenda.”