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USA Today reports Trump has Officially Begun to Withdraw the US From the World Health Organization as Pandemic Spikes:
The Trump administration has officially begun to withdraw the United States from the World Health Organization, even as the COVID-19 pandemic continues to grip the globe and infections spike in many states across the U.S.
Congress received formal notification of the decision on Tuesday, more than a month after President Donald Trump announced his intention to end the U.S. relationship with the WHO and blasted the multilateral institution as a tool of China. The White House said the withdrawal would take effect on July 6, 2021.
[...] The formal withdrawal comes as the United States nears 3 million reported coronavirus cases and more than 130,000 deaths, according to Johns Hopkins University data. Globally, there have been 11.6 million cases and almost 540,000 deaths.
Additional Coverage:
Trump administration moves to formally withdraw US from WHO
Trump administration begins formal withdrawal from World Health Organization
Trump Begins Process Of U.S. Withdrawal From World Health Organization
Previously:
(2020-05-20) Trump Threatens to Take US Out of WHO Entirely and Stop All US Funding
(2020-04-15) Trump to Halt Funding to WHO
(Score: 2) by Thexalon on Thursday July 09 2020, @03:45PM
Is the World Health Organization the *only possible* way to combat health problems that could adversely affect the US (never mind the world, apparently that doesn't matter to you)? No, of course not: It's easy to imagine other ways of organizing around the same goal.
Is the WHO probably useful? Absolutely. Their response, while not perfect by any means, substantially helped in lots of countries around the world. For instance, do you really think Cambodia had the resources to, on their own, limit their Covid-19 outbreak to under 200 people?
So why did the US not benefit from the work of the WHO? Because the president and his administration consistently refused their help. The WHO offered testing kits, research cooperation, protective equipment for medical personnel, and the US chose to take advantage of none of it because they were afraid that taking help from anybody else would look bad. And now the US administration is busy demanding that kids and teachers go back to in-person school in the fall despite knowing full well that that decision will cause kids, teachers, and parents to get infected and in some cases killed.
And why is the US withdrawing from the WHO? To preserve the illusion that the extent of the US outbreak of Covid-19, by far the worst in the world, is the fault of somebody other than the president and his administration. It's just the latest expression of that man's unofficial motto: The Buck Stops Somewhere Else.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.