Trump signs executive order withdrawing from the World Health Organization
reuters.comTruly some of the dumbest people are now in control of the US Government.
Im interested to see how other world leaders respond. Clearly, the US is withdrawing from international commitments, but other countries certainly realize the benefits of having these organizations. I am hopeful that other nations step up to fill the gap.
Perhaps we are witnessing the unraveling of the Informal Empire in real time. Historic moment!
It's not dumb when it's evil:
> House Passes Bill to Impose Sanctions on I.C.C. Officials for Israeli Prosecutions
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/01/09/us/politics/icc-sanctions...
This has nothing to do with the WHO.
Apparently you forgot the WHO's catastrophic missteps during COVID?
At some point, you need to fire your under-performing partners.
> Truly some of the dumbest people are now in control of the US Government.
Oh please. Biden has dementia.
Was it wise to replace dementia with dementia?
No! Kamala's run was a mistake!
And yet, somehow, they've managed the difficult task of under-performing someone with dementia.
Oh yeah that's why they pulled him, because he was doing such a great job.
Individuals don't run the government, something that will become clear as day by the end of next quarter.
A single person couldn't possibly have the bandwidth to be able to direct government, especially someone over the age of 70.
Do you really think Trump or Biden are sitting down and drafting executive orders themselves? Do you even think they came up with their campaigns themselves?
There are organizations behind these things, composed of partisan ideologues. That is how you get the bullshit in the last administration and the bullshit in this administration.
He didn't run the government by himself.
The Biden administration was composed of way more career oriented individuals in the right place than this administration. You have to be lying to yourself (or believing others who are lying to you) to think otherwise.
The WHO should have kicked us out. Who are we to be involved in anything healthcare in a global scale? We can't provide reliable healthcare to our own citizens. We're in the 20th percentile of longevity worldwide. Taking funding or expertise from our hacks is probably holding the world back. With any luck the lack of cooperation will thin the herd of under earning Americans to free up capitol for the healthcare CEOs.
US is very capitalistic, and in economic terms retirees living long means they consume a lot of resources but produce very little after retirement. So they need a large base of young workers to support them.
The US state of healthcare is terrible, but weirdly it also means retirees don't live long as an unintended consequence. This juices up the economy.
Not a smart move. Leaves the field open to the Chinese.
Yup, US takes their poker chips home as China comes in and sweeps up the power. This is a big opportunity for them and extremely short sighted for the US.
Also big opportunity for France.
France is totally paralysed right now and in the foreseeable future by a political crisis.
He did something similar in his first term, and you can draw a straight line from that action to the bungled early COVID response.
Which N95 mask manufacturers should we should be buying stock in? (I’d say “vaccine manufacturers”, but lolz.)
Remember when hospitals were struggling to find masks, and there were reports of shipments being seized and disappearing?
https://www.politico.com/news/2020/03/27/republican-fundrais...
Some choice quotes:
> Asked how he’d managed to procure such equipment when there are shortages in hospitals across the country, Gula said, “I have relationships with a lot of people.”
> Thomas declined to specify how he and Gula had managed to obtain masks that have become so rare that some hospitals have resorted to reusing them or having health care workers tie bandannas or scarfs around their faces. “It’s just relationship-based,” he said. “I can’t say anything else.”
> “I don’t want to overstate, but we probably represent the largest global supply chain for Covid-19 supplies right now,” he said. “We are getting ready to fill 100 million-unit mask orders.”
This last one is the kicker. This guy, who works with/for the Republican party, is able to set up shop in TWO WEEKS, "the largest global supply chain", "based off of relationships", and alarm bells aren't ringing?
I would love for someone to buy masks from Blue Flame, and check lot numbers / serial numbers on those supplies, and see who the original intended recipients were.
I'm extremely disillusioned by the number of people in tech who are supporting Trump despite things like this.
Perhaps we are confusing what we mean by "people in tech".
There are some people in tech who are inventing new algorithms, proving new theorems, developing new frameworks and moving technology further.
There are the "people in tech" who are entrepreneurs. To make money, they rely on tech, sure. But their philosophy is not inherently different from an entrepreneur who is in some other industry.
There is definitely some overlap between the two sets, for sure. But we cant draw the same conclusion about both of these sets of people
The oligarchy is backedby middle managers with 401ks directly dependent on their success.
The march to this point is the use of capitalism to drive out socialism to implement racism. Its just now that the ends meet the justified means.
It would suck then if the oligarchy comes for their 401ks.
Well, the 401ks are the market so its both healthcare and retirement plans. No, theyre going to kill medicare and social security. Truly isolate people as feudal slaves.
401k’s? oligarch have 401k’s? you meant peasants who voted for them from Pennsylvania/Nevada/Georgia have 401k’s (few of them at least might…)?
> extremely disillusioned by the number of people in tech who are supporting Trump despite things like this
more egregiously, he tried to have the results of an election illegally overturned, incited the storming of the Capitol (and threats on elected officials), and today pardoned all those who did so (so obviously he was on their side; just think for a moment how that is going to embolden them)
we can argue about the merits of D vs R policies, but Trump is an affront to our democracy; shame on him and shame on all those who enable him
why do you think people support him? in tech and in general?
social engineering usually amplifies what already exists
When you look at the people that stand lockstep with pg, or viciously defense Elon Musk as he openly admits to being a fake gamer it becomes clear that this was going to be the next step. The tech oligarchs have formed a cult of personality around themselves and have no problem setting the world on fire for an additional buck.
I think the only thing that'll end up shaking people awake is when said oligarchs finally get their way and crash the economy in a way that everyone feels. Because as rich as they are, we're ruled by the dumbest oligarchs alive.
pg supported Harris:
https://www.businessinsider.com/y-combinator-paul-graham-say...
I rooted for Trump precisely for things like this.
Why?
Disclosure: I don’t believe in individual rights, I think we should hold people down and vaccinate them for the good of the community. But the UN sucks. My dad worked for a USAID contractor his whole career doing international development, and he says the UN is the most bureaucratic and ineffective organization in the world. It’s giant bureaucracy dragged down by all the third world countries that couldn’t efficiently run a popsicle stand.
There’s nothing the US needs to do in the area of health that it needs to do within the context of the WHO.
If the population of a nation trusts each other, shares goals, has a common base knowledge grounded in shared reality, enjoys a standard of living that doesn't make them suffer, etc, you don't need to hold people down to forcefully make them do anything.
A population like that wants to help each other, not outdo each other, not compete with each other over who is more divisive, and so on.
You don't believe in individual rights and think we should hold people down vaccinate them? That's pretty disgusting.
Agreed, if he is damaging enough maybe some folks will finally get the message.
What message?
It can be argued that the WHO is a politically influenced organization that made serious mistakes during the COVID-19 pandemic. For example, it relied on incomplete or misleading information provided by China in the early stages of the outbreak, which delayed global recognition of the virus’s severity. Additionally, the WHO supported the use of cloth masks long after it became clear that they were largely ineffective at preventing the spread of COVID-19.
Trump supporters, like myself, think it’s smart not to reduce our nation’s sovereignty by kowtowing to the WHO. We as a nation can make appropriate health decisions.
The WHO is a mechanism to allow a degree of cooperation among the world’s nations on matters of public health. It’s imperfect, as any organisation with such a difficult scope would be.
But the world needs some way to cooperate, especially in matters of public health which do not care about national borders. Casually throwing that away for short term political theatre is so painfully stupid.
Also, no one kowtows to the WHO and no one gives up national sovereignty over their own health decisions. What led you to believe this?
I’m not. They’ve had a front row seat to the last 4 years.
Even the true Blue democrats are jumping ship. What does that tell you?
> Even the true Blue democrats are jumping ship. What does that tell you?
Who are all these true-blue Democrats that are now MAGA?
84% of non-religious white college grads voted for Harris[1]. What this tells me is that this presidency is simply the poorly educated and the believers in the supernatural getting their turn at bat. Oh well, I'll benefit more from the inevitable tax cut for the rich than they will.
[1] https://www.cnn.com/election/2024/exit-polls/national-result...
lol, it’s incredible how the virtual signallibg left goes with “white, educated” when they lose power.
What are you saying? That the smart, white people voted for Democrats and clearly they always chose correctly?
This is such nonsense. You're holding an elitist view that does not even evidence the intelligence that you claim. These "college grads," you say, what are their degrees? We have college grads these days that went through school without even reading one book. These statistics lump together someone with a physics degree or even a philosophy degree with those with a "gender studies" or "communications" degree; many of these people are baristas at Starbucks but this kind of tactic tries to make it seem that this group are the intelligentsia. Please. I think you will find there are plenty of people more educated than yourself that voted for him.
> What does that tell you?
they're just chasing the money, and to hell with the rest
> What does that tell you?
Tech bros are not immune to populism
“China has too much political influence over the WHO, so we’ll withdraw, giving them even more influence over the WHO”
"The U.S. has historically been one of the largest funders of WHO." [1]. Withdrawing diminishes the WHO China controls.
(Looking at the WHO's largest voluntary contributors [2], I could see the UK, Australia and France withdrawing soon, too.)
[1] https://www.kff.org/coronavirus-covid-19/fact-sheet/the-u-s-...
> Withdrawing diminishes the WHO China controls.
Unless they decide to step up their funding as a soft power play.
This is a better page for viewing the WHO's sources of funding, at least for 2022-23[0][1]. There are three separate categories of voluntary funding and only 6.6% of funds come from Core Voluntary Contributions as displayed in your graph.
The UK won't withdraw from the WHO whilst Labour are in government.
Starmer is many things wrong but one thing he won't do is renegade on international treaties and agreements.
> UK won't withdraw from the WHO whilst Labour are in government
You're right, I brainfarted and mixed up the coming political shifts in Canada and the UK.
I'm from the UK and don't anticipate any political impetus for leaving the WHO even if the Tories return to power. I feel like the UK discourse did not blame the WHO for COVID scandals as much as the US's did. Googling around I did find this petition during Sunak's term, but it ranked low in terms of signatures for petitions during that Parliament: https://petition.parliament.uk/archived/petitions/648609 .
I still think for the most part the WHO's actions during COVID were all made in good faith, even if mistakes were made.
The WHO being outside politics is good, it means it can focus on health/science and not worry about appealing to electorates.
I think Trump has a point though regarding China's contributions, China isn't a poor country but the WHO doesn't really have any way of forcing it to pay more.
The problem is the WHO influence over the US.
Imagine other economies having the temerity to want to understand public health in the USA and how it goes up and down state by state, federal government by federal government.
WHO lied about Mpox, a disease that affected gay men. They had know that since at least 2017.
Mpox has now mutated and is rapidly spreading and killing children and the wider population, as well as gay men.
If they told the truth we might have been able to stop it's spread through targeted education and have stopped it mutating. They also might not be considered a conspiracy organization, which with Mpox they truthful were.
It's disappointing Trump has done this, but expected given the way the insane Left destroys everything it touches.
Look at the HN comments here and on all the executive orders. Low IQed people spurting out emotions the media tells them to feel. This is why many people chose Trump.
also it’s another one of those cases where an ounce of prevention ought to be easy enough… except that for some reason no one wants to talk about it
Just go to your doctor and ask to get vaccinated.
The U.S. plays 'sugar daddy' to far too many international organizations (WHO, WTO, United Nations) where we provide far more than our fair share of the funding; yet they still treat us like dirt.
At one level, this is actually true. The WHO supports women's reproductive rights, access to abortion, contraception and gay rights which are opposed by many people in the U.S. of voting age, and the difference in support inside WHO and in the U.S. does ignore the massive financial dependency on the U.S. funding.
This isn't actually a new thing. Aid has always begged the question: is the aid blind, or is the aid seen as an arm of foreign policy? Agencies like the world bank definitely put requirements on recipient of financial aid, like liberalising markets, and removing labor laws favouring unionisation.
"treat us like dirt" is hyperbole. I get that the money is not received with thanks, and I get that the agencies don't reflect U.S. culture or goals.
So I guess I agree with you a lot. The point of difference is how much it matters. You clearly think the principle goal should be the U.S. foreign policy outcome. I am less certain. When moral majority religious right is in power, defunding contraception and abortion in Africa happens. Which consequently leads to a rise in child poverty, mortality and other problems. Melinda Gates funding initiatives here were at odds with the U.S. Government for some periods of time. I do not like the dependency on private benificence.
I certainly think the rest of the world should pick up the funding pace, but I worry the shift in geopolitics here will turn out to be net-negative for the U.S. -certainly, in respect of womens reproductive rights I think thats a good thing (because of the extreme variability/volatility in the U.S. agenda here) but in other ways it may not be: Donor economies with less ethical basis may now demand votes in other contexts to support them. You're handing soft-power to other people. Are you sure you want to do that?
The U.S. may lose influence. If you are a WW1 era protectionist/isolationist, thats a good thing. I am not, I suspect you aren't either. But maybe you are?
> You clearly think the principle goal should be the U.S. foreign policy outcome.
What about just not being a total money pit AND the money not being used against us?
That’s a far cry from optimizing for US foreign policy,
This was one of his campaign pledges that he ran on and he fulfilled it ASAP. The WHO ignored reports of Covid spread in Wuhan, denied that virus originated there and ignored all warnings given by Taiwan.
Remember these famous WHO quotes ?
"Preliminary investigations conducted by the Chinese authorities have found no clear evidence of human-to-human transmission."
"There is no clear evidence of sustained transmission between people."
Until people were falling dead on TV, the WHO doubled down on this crap. There was no apology given for their utterly corrupt incompetence.
Refusing to play a blame game in the middle of a crisis was and will always be the right call.
Knowing that it came from China would have saved 0 lives. However, bickering about costs and sanctions would have. In the end we figured it out anyway.
The WHO were the ones playing their political games, because the WHO president was supported by China...
Is there actual reputable evidence of this or is it just propaganda?
Frankly I don’t appreciate being accused of spreading propaganda.
That Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus was chinas candidate is well known. It’s not a controversial statement.
It’s a topic that’s had so much spin on it, it’s difficult to tell even from wikipedia. That was my point really, not to accuse you of spreading it.
There are clearly quotes of interest that one would expect from a candidate supported by China. We need to reach a point where the international organizations don’t have “sides” but humanity isn’t there yet.
> There was no apology given for their utterly corrupt incompetence.
Unlike the Trump administration, who were very eager to apologize for their own corrupt incompetent advice?