The recent decision by the United States to withdraw from the World Health Organization (WHO) has sparked a flurry of speculation about the organization's future.
The move, which comes in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, has been interpreted by some as a sign of lingering dissatisfaction with the WHO's perceived capitulation to Chinese censorship during the global health crisis.
President Donald Trump recently signed an executive order to initiate the withdrawal process from the WHO. The decision was based on concerns about unfair membership dues and the disproportionate influence of certain member states within the organization. This move has stirred up a whirlwind of questions about the survival of the WHO, both in Washington and Geneva.
According to an anonymous source, WHO leaders attending the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, privately acknowledged the seriousness of the U.S.'s intention to leave the organization. They conceded that it would take a significant gesture to convince the U.S. to reconsider its decision. "If the United States withdraws it may well collapse," warned health care consultant Kathleen Sebelius, who served as the Department of Health and Human Services secretary during the Obama administration, in a CNN interview.
President Trump, in a speech on January 26, hinted at the possibility of the U.S. remaining in the WHO if the organization implements necessary reforms. "Maybe we would consider doing it again. I dont know. Maybe we would. They have to clean it up a little bit," he stated. However, hopes that the executive order was merely a negotiation tactic were dashed when news broke that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) had been instructed to immediately cease collaboration with the WHO.
As reported by the Daily Caller, the Trump administration's Office of Management and Budget and the Department of Government Efficiency recently halted a $37 million payment to the WHO. This move disappointed some WHO supporters who had hoped that the Trump administration would adhere to international conventions that require dues to be paid before withdrawal from a treaty.
The executive order also mandates a renewed focus on biosecurity within the National Security Council. It instructs the presidents national security advisor to establish necessary directorates and coordinating mechanisms within the National Security Council to safeguard public health and strengthen biosecurity.
The decision to withdraw from the WHO coincided with the five-year anniversary of the organization's controversial decision not to declare a public health emergency of international concern for the novel coronavirus. This was at a time when Chinese authorities were struggling to contain and conceal the escalating crisis in Wuhan.
Evidence suggests that Chinese authorities were aware of small family clusters of a novel outbreak by December 31, 2019. However, in the crucial early pandemic period in January 2020, China ordered the destruction of viral samples and cracked down on doctors for sharing information. After a lab in Shanghai published the novel coronaviruss genetic sequence for the first time on Jan. 12, 2020, authorities shuttered the lab for rectification. Human-to-human transmission was not officially confirmed until January 19, 2020.
Despite these alarming developments, when the WHO arrived in mid-February 2020, WHO Assistant Director-General Bruce Aylward urged colleagues to ensure we meet Chinas need for a strong assessment of its response. In communications with the CDC, Aylward was highly complementary of Chinas policies and did not question the data coming from China, according to a senior CDC official.
The WHOs expert team, which was only granted 48 hours in Wuhan, concluded that China has rolled out perhaps the most ambitious, agile and aggressive disease containment effort in history. This praise was highlighted in state propaganda as a global endorsement of the significant advantages of the [Chinese Communist Partys] leadership.
The Chinese governments influence on the WHO continued into the Biden administration. In January 2021, a second group of global experts selected by the WHO traveled to Wuhan to work with Chinese scientists to assess the pandemics origins. Despite a limited tour inside Chinas only maximum security lab in Wuhan with no access to the labs safety records, lab notebooks or viral samples, the team announced that the lab origin hypothesis was extremely unlikely.
The U.S. and 13 other countries expressed concern about the reports independence and validity. WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus distanced himself from that conclusion, saying all hypotheses remain on the table. He called for the creation of a new global team, the Scientific Advisory Group on the Origins of Novel Pathogens, to produce a more credible report.
However, four years after the WHO-China mission concluded a lab origin was extremely unlikely, the report that was supposed to provide a fairer analysis has never seen the light of day. Despite the WHO's repeated requests for China to share all available information on the earliest cases, animals sold in Wuhan markets, labs working with coronaviruses, and more, it has not received this information, according to WHO Emerging Diseases and Zoonoses Unit Head Maria Van Kerkhove.
Jamie Metzl, a former Clinton administration official and advisor to the WHO, has been among the most vocal proponents for an investigation into the lab origin hypothesis and has been critical of Chinas pressure on the WHO. Metzl believes the U.S. should remain in the organization and counter Chinas influence.
However, other close observers of the WHO argue that the organizations struggles to honestly grapple with the origins of COVID-19 and the potential role of the Wuhan Institute of Virology are not solely attributable to the influence of China. Many member states view biosecurity, especially as it relates to labs, as a national security issue rather than a public health issue.
Whether the WHO should prioritize biosecurity and whether the U.S. can replicate or improve upon the WHOs biosecurity work through the National Security Council are likely to be key questions in the coming months. David Bell, a former WHO scientist, has led a research effort to analyze the efficacy of the WHO with the University of Leeds and the conservative Brownstone Institute.
Bell argues that the WHO has devoted too many resources to rare novel outbreaks and too few to less glamorous, more endemic diseases because of private funders interest in developing new vaccines. For COVID there were hundreds of billions of dollars of profit, Bell said.
Matthew McKnight, the chief commercial officer of Ginkgo Bioworks, argues that biosecurity, including surveillance for novel viruses, is a central role of the WHO. McKnight argues that the WHOs function of surveillance and coordination to detect novel viruses and sharing that data globally should be preserved or recreated with the U.S. and partner countries.
Whether the U.S. reenters the WHO or mimics its surveillance work via the National Security Council, its clear that the status quo failed in the face of the worst pandemic in a century, McKnight said. The failure to see COVID coming was the worst intelligence failure since before 9/11. Its the worst intelligence failure since radar failed to detect the Japanese planes that attacked Pearl Harbor, he said.
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