President Trump to halt funding to the World Health Organization

World Heath Organization logo.

President Trump will halt funding to the World Health Organization due to pro-China bias and mismanagement of the Coronavirus crisis. The Hill. The United States will conduct an official review of the WHO's response. President Trump said that the organization condemned travel bans for the sake of political correctness and did not vet and share accurate information on the virus. The review will last between 60 and 90 days and the money will be diverted to fighting the virus, though details have not been released yet. The United States is a major source of funding to the World Health Organization

My Comment:

I think this is the right thing to do. Though no country or organization has covered themselves in glory during this outbreak, including the United States, the WHO's response has been shameful. The entire point of the organization is to help prevent the situation we are in and they failed. Miserably. 

This is largely due to the organization's pro-China bias. Time and time again they did what was best for China and not what was best for the world. If they had said that every country should ban travel to and from China they could have saved many lives but instead they said that travel bans were racist. And they said that there was no human to human transmission when it was obvious that was the main way the virus was spreading. 

They also refused to help Taiwan with the virus and did not accept the countries help because of the "one China policy" that refuses to acknowledge the existence of the country. Taiwan has done an excellent job in fighting the virus and would have been a great place to learn from but the WHO didn't want to offend China.

They also gave some bad advice. To this day the WHO doesn't recommend facemask usage for normal people, only recommending it for people treating people with the disease. This is bad advice that even the CDC doesn't agree with anymore. People should have been using facemasks since the beginning and though the WHO wasn't the only group to get this wrong, it doesn't change the fact that they blew it. 

Clearly we aren't getting our money's worth. The WHO should pay a price for what they have done and a cut of funding may force them to act better. We don't give them millions of dollars to get things this wrong and they are not helping the world all that much. 

Some are going to say that this is the wrong time to cut funding. I disagree since the WHO has been worse than useless. When they are screwing things up so badly and serving the interests of China and not the whole world than what is the point? We are just throwing money away, money that could be better used elsewhere. 

However, I do wonder how President Trump will cut this funding. From what I understand Congress controls that and doubt that Nancy Pelosi and the Democrats in the house will go along with this. Like the WHO, they too are beholden to China and will undermine President Trump in any way they can. President Trump may try to do this but it's unclear if he will succeed or not.