President Trump yesterday threatened to permanently end US funding of the World Health Organization and withdraw the US from the WHO entirely.

In a letter to WHO Director General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, Trump alleged that “the repeated missteps by you and your organization in responding to the pandemic have been extremely costly for the world” and that the WHO must “demonstrate independence from China.”

“[I]f the World Health Organization does not commit to major substantive improvements within the next 30 days, I will make my temporary freeze of United States funding to the World Health Organization permanent and reconsider our membership in the organization,” Trump wrote. “I cannot allow American taxpayer dollars to continue to finance an organization that, in its present state, is so clearly not serving America’s interests.”

Trump posted the letter on Twitter, writing, “It is self-explanatory!”

Trump has repeatedly denied any responsibility for COVID-19 spreading in America and said on April 14 that the US would temporarily halt funding the WHO until his administration completed a review of the group’s response to the coronavirus pandemic. Trump’s letter yesterday said that “review has confirmed many of the serious concerns I raised last month and identified others that the World Health Organization should have addressed, especially the World Health Organization’s alarming lack of independence from the People’s Republic of China.”

Trump previously said his administration was considering various proposals, including one in which the US would pay only 10 percent of its former contribution to the WHO. The US would have to exit WHO in order to stop funding it entirely because the group charges membership dues. The US also makes voluntary contributions to the organization.

Trump letter makes false claim

Trump’s letter then lists a series of claims, the first being that the WHO “consistently ignored credible reports of the virus spreading in Wuhan in early December 2019 or even earlier, including reports from the Lancet medical journal.”

The Lancet quickly issued a response explaining that Trump is wrong. “This statement is factually incorrect,” The Lancet said. “The Lancet published no report in December, 2019, referring to a virus or outbreak in Wuhan or anywhere else in China.” The Lancet’s first reports on the topic were published on January 24, 2020 the statement said.

“The allegations leveled against WHO in President Trump’s letter are serious and damaging to efforts to strengthen international cooperation to control this pandemic,” The Lancet said. “It is essential that any review of the global response is based on a factually accurate account of what took place in December and January.”

A WHO spokesperson told Ars today that “WHO acknowledges receipt of the letter from the President of the United States. We are considering the contents of the letter.” Last month, the WHO responded to Trump’s temporary funding freeze with a call for global unity in the fight against the virus.

Trump may not be able to permanently end funding to the WHO unilaterally. The Wall Street Journal wrote last month that “congressional Democrats say Mr. Trump can’t cut WHO funding on his own,” but that the “White House budget office has concluded the president has several options to withhold money from the WHO without congressional approval,” such as by “order[ing] agencies to reroute the money to other related purposes.”

Trump still focused on travel ban

The US generally provides about 15 percent of the WHO’s budget and gave the organization $893 million during the WHO’s two-year funding cycle that ended on December 31. The US was reportedly already late on its payments to the WHO when Trump announced a temporary funding freeze.

Trump’s letter yesterday said, “Throughout this crisis, the World Health Organization has been curiously insistent on praising China for its alleged ‘transparency.'” Trump’s letter did not mention that Trump himself praised China for its “transparency” on January 24 or that Trump repeatedly praised China for its coronavirus response throughout February.

Trump is also still mad at the WHO for its response to his travel ban. Trump wrote:

You also strongly praised China’s strict domestic travel restrictions, but were inexplicably against my closing of the United States border, or the ban, with respect to people coming from China. I put the ban in place regardless of your wishes. Your political gamesmanship on this issue was deadly, as other governments, relying on your comments, delayed imposing life-saving restrictions on travel to and from China. Incredibly, on February 3, 2020, you reinforced your position, opining that because China was doing such a great job protecting the world from the virus, travel restrictions were “causing more harm than good.” Yet by then the world knew that, before locking down Wuhan, Chinese authorities had allowed more than five million people to leave the city and that many of these people were bound for international destinations all over the world.

Despite Trump’s claim, a USA Today article on April 11 said, “there is no public record of WHO at any point actively criticizing the US or any other country for deciding to implement a coronavirus-related travel ban” and that the WHO “opposes all travel bans during a pandemic, not just Trump’s.” The WHO on January 24 said it “advises against the application of any restrictions of international traffic based on the information currently available on this event.”

Health experts say Trump’s travel ban had little effect on the pandemic’s spread. Trump continued to downplay the virus’s severity by comparing it to the flu as late as March 24, nearly two months after the WHO declared a global health emergency. Trump has also fought state governors over their cautious approaches to reopening the economy.

“I’m tired of those who bear the responsibility accepting none of it while deflecting blame on others, [including] the previous administration, the World Health Organization, the Wuhan lab, anywhere but where the blame belongs,” US Rep. Anna Eshoo (D-Calif.) said last week at a hearing on a whistleblower complaint that says the Trump administration’s COVID-19 response was hampered by cronyism and denial about the virus’s severity.

https://arstechnica.com/?p=1677161