Trumps Withdrawal From WHO: A Cover-Up for His Abject Failure on COVID-19

Details: Published on Thursday, 06 August 2020 03:58; Written by editor

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A Socialist Project e-bulletin ... No. 2163 ... August 6, 2020
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Trump’s Withdrawal From WHO: A Cover-Up for His Abject Failure on COVID-19

Prabir Purkayastha

Microbes do not recognize borders. We are all safe only when everybody is safe. In a pandemic, to attack the only body we have for global cooperation endangers everyone. That is why the US withdrawal from the World Health Organization (WHO) is dangerous not only for the United States, but for all of the world.

Trump’s decision to withdraw from the WHO is a continuation of his wielding a wrecking ball to the international framework of treaties and organizations. Whether it is arms control, climate change, trade or the WHO, the United States sees these agreements and institutions as fetters on its hegemonic powers to shape the world. Trump may express this pathology in its most ugly form, but the disease runs far deeper.

Trump’s excuse for withdrawing from the WHO is that it did not do its job well on the COVID-19 epidemic and was soft on China. Condemning Trump’s move, Devi Sridhar, professor of global public health... at the University of Edinburgh and adviser to the Scottish government, tweeted, "Donald Trump’s withdrawal of US from the WHO ignores the key role the agency plays in outbreak prevention and response. Not only for COVID, but also for polio, malaria, TB, plague, yellow fever, cholera, Zika virus, and neglected tropical diseases." She also pointed out that it is because of such international agreements that the WHO received information from China on the novel pathogen on December 30, 2019, and declared the "highest alarm bell the world has" -- a Public Health Emergency of International Concern -- on January 30, 2020.