- The main story concerns the World Health Organization (WHO) and President Trump's decision to withdraw the United States from it.
- The WHO coordinates global responses to health issues and has had significant successes, such as eradicating smallpox.
- Trump criticizes the WHO for being China-centric and for the large discrepancy in funding between the US and China.
- The US pays a much larger amount to the WHO compared to China, but most of its contribution is voluntary.
- The Reagan administration's budget policy in the 1980s contributed to the WHO's reliance on voluntary donations.
- Trump has already submitted a notice of withdrawal, which will take effect next July.

- The video criticizes the Reagan White House for various decisions, including the mishandling of the AIDS crisis and the war on drugs.
- It argues against the claim that the World Health Organization (WHO) is deferential to China, pointing out that other leaders, including Trump, also praised China's response to the pandemic.
- The video acknowledges that the WHO made mistakes early on in the pandemic but argues that there is no evidence it was done to appease China.
- It refutes the idea that the US can go it alone without the WHO, highlighting the organization's diplomatic approach and the US's checkered past in global health.
- The video criticizes Trump's decision to withdraw funding from the WHO, especially during a global pandemic, and warns of the potential negative impact on initiatives such as the eradication of polio.
- It emphasizes the importance of having a seat at the table and addressing problems within the WHO rather than walking away from it.
- The video concludes that leaving the WHO would be a dangerous and ill-advised decision, particularly in the midst of a pandemic.

John Oliver discusses the crucial role of the World Health Organization, why Donald Trump is skeptical of it, and how his plans to withdraw the United States could have dire consequences.

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♪♪ Tonight, I'd like to talk about something incredibly important that hinges on this election because our main story concerns the World Health Organization, or WHO.

You may already be aware of it in its role as 1 of the president's favorite punching bags.

The World Health Organization should be ashamed of themselves.

I'm not happy with the World Health Organization.

They're literally a pipe organ for China.

Okay, the WHO is not literally a pipe organ for China, because the only thing that is literally a pipe organ for China is a pipe organ, because that's what the word literally means.

Over the last 6 months, Trump has consistently tried to deflect blame for his handling of the coronavirus onto the WHO, China, and the close relationship that he claims the 2 have.

And at the beginning of July, he turns that criticism into real action.

In the midst of a pandemic, Donald Trump is formally pulling out of the World Health Organization.

We will be today terminating our relationship with the World Health Organization and redirecting those funds to other worldwide and deserving, urgent global public health needs.

But do spare a thought there for Melania, who must have heard the sentence, we will be today terminating our relationship, and for the briefest of moments, felt hope.

Except, I'm totally kidding, spare no thoughts for her.

She's not a baby, she's totally complicit, and never forget that she did once say, who gives a fuck about Christmas stuff and decorations?

An attitude fully present in her holiday theme, best described as, what if trees got periods and hated you?

The point is, in the midst of everything we're going through right now, Trump has decided to withdraw the United States from the WHO.

And if you're thinking, well, surely he can't do that right, the good news is the WHO's constitution doesn't include any provisions for members to withdraw.

The bad news is, there's exactly 1 exception to that rule, and it's the United States, which passed a resolution decades ago specifying we actually can withdraw after giving 1 year's notice.

And that is a pretty weird perk for America alone to have.

It's like finding out we're demanded to be the only country allowed to wax the pubes of every squirrel.

Why would we want the right to do that in the first place?

And more to the point, why would we ever consider actually doing it?

He's already submitted a notice of withdrawal to the UN to take effect next July.

And given that we're now on track to leave the WHO in less than a year, tonight, let's talk about what that actually means, how important the WHO's work is, how valid criticisms of it are, and what we might be putting at stake.

It was founded in 1948, and has since grown to 194 member states.

And very broadly, it coordinates global responses to a wide range of health issues, including alerting the world to threats, fighting diseases, developing policy, and improving access to care.

1 of the biggest powers it has is the ability to declare a public health emergency of international concern and issue recommendations on how countries should respond.

But, and this is really important, it has absolutely no power on its own to enforce those recommendations.

It can only act within a country to the extent that country allows it to.

And yet, despite those significant limitations, it's managed to do some incredible things in the past, with perhaps its most notable success being this.

Today, a substantial milestone in human history.

The World Health Organization says smallpox has now been wiped off the face of the Earth and will never return.

It says it'll never return because smallpox can only be caught from another person, and if no other person has it, there is no other way to catch it.

The WHO completely eradicated smallpox, which killed 300 million people in the 20th century alone.

In the space of a decade, it took smallpox from 10 million cases and 2000000 deaths a year, all the way down to 0.

And it's amazing that something can go from being that widespread to completely disappearing within a few years.

Smallpox is basically the circuit city of infectious diseases, and it's equally as missed.

And it's not like the WHO did this with a magic wand.

Not only did they have to arrange a collaboration between America and the USSR at the height of the Cold War, 1 of the last big countries where smallpox had to be tackled was India.

And just listen to 1 of the doctors involved in the effort.

To eradicate smallpox, it meant that we would have to visit every single house in India.

We visited 120 million houses in India every month for about 20 months.

It's only a few more houses than Creschel visited on Selling Sunset.

You get the listings, you get the results.

I don't know where Creschel hustles more, on the streets of L.A.

Or on the Dancing With the Stars dance floor.

But the WHO's work isn't always as lofty as door-to-door disease destruction.

Some of its most important work involves the development of the seasonal flu vaccine.

Twice a year, it convenes representatives from all over the world to determine what strains of the flu virus should go into the annual flu shot.

Which might sound tedious, because it is, but it's also kind of important.

And that, by the way, was actually the original title for this show.

The WHO is also currently tracking and responding to dozens of infectious disease outbreaks around the world, including monkeypox, yellow fever, and an ongoing Ebola outbreak.

And when, let's say hypothetically, a pandemic breaks out, the organization can provide a critical role as a central clearinghouse of information, conducting investigations, and releasing information to the public.

And it does all of this on a current budget of 2.4 billion dollars a year.

Which might sound like a lot, but it's around the same amount it costs to run a single U.S.

Navy runs on the same budget as Typhoon Lagoon at Disney World.

I'm not sure if Typhoon Lagoon's budget is way too high, or the Navy's is way too low, but something is definitely off there.

So, at its best, the WHO does vitally important work for shockingly little money, which is not to say that it is perfect.

There are legitimate criticisms of how it's behaved in the past, among them, that during the Ebola outbreak In 2014, they acted too slowly to declare a public health emergency, which had major consequences.

But the truth is, for Trump, past performance isn't really the issue here.

For him, there are 2 insurmountable problems with the WHO, and the first is how much of its budget the U.S.

We pay 400 to 500 million dollars a year.

China's paying 38, 39, and 40 million dollars a year.

It's been going on for a long period of time.

And we don't want to be the suckers anymore.

Now, you're probably already assuming it's more complicated than that, and it is.

The problem is, Trump is incapable of acknowledging nuance.

In his world, you're either fucking someone or you're getting fucked.

And that's not a great perspective when it comes to cooperating on global health.

It's not even a great perspective at an orgy.

Because sure, there's gonna be a lot of both going on, but those can't be the only options.

Someone's gotta make sure everyone's staying hydrated.

Someone's gotta be available to tip the pizza delivery person.

Someone's got to disinfect the coffee table afterwards.

It can't all be just fucking and getting fucked, or there's going to be chaos.

Now, what is true in Trump's argument there is that there is a big discrepancy between what the U.S.

Paid just over $446 million, And China, the second largest economy in the world, paid just $43 million.

But it's rooted in how the WHO is funded.

Because the fact is, only around 17 percent of its funding comes through assessed contributions, which are basically membership dues based on the size of each country's economy and population.

Almost all of the rest comes through voluntary contributions.

That's where a country donates money, but in doing so, can earmark exactly what they want it used for.

Pays each year is voluntary contributions, whereas China chooses to pay almost nothing.

And you could argue that this is a dumb way to fund an organization.

It's essentially the global health equivalent of underfunding a public school and expecting it to hold a bake sale to make up the difference.

But the thing is, this whole mess is almost entirely America's fault.

Back in the 1980s, the Reagan administration pushed a 0 growth policy for the WHO's budget, which eventually froze states' assessed contributions at 1990s levels.

So, with those contributions unable to go up, the WHO has naturally needed more and more voluntary donations as the years have gone by.

And I would say that this was the worst decision of the Reagan White House, were it not for Iran-Contra, the war on drugs, trickle-down economics, and failing to publicly say the word AIDS for 4 years.

I'm not saying everything is Reagan's fault.

All I'm saying is, if I found out tomorrow that murder hornets are only here because he started breeding them in 1988, I can't say I'd be entirely surprised.

The point is, That is why we pay so much relative to China.

It's mostly because we choose to, because the WHO is underfunded, because of something we did.

So, what about Trump's second big complaint?

The WHO is a literal pipe organ for China, which again, it literally isn't.

That is an idea that he and his supporters have hammered hard.

The World Health Organization's subservience to their masters in Beijing has only become more obvious, more naked.

Allowing the World Health Organization to investigate China is like having El Chapo investigate the Mexican drug cartels.

I mean, China lied, the World Health Organization complied, and as a result, many Americans died.

Okay, now, I know that rhyme sounded compelling, But it is important to remember, not everything that rhymes is true.

He stood on a boat and pushed as hard as he could.

And that's how James Comer killed Natalie Wood.

But I do have to accept that it might be untrue.

Now, what they are essentially arguing there is, the WHO mishandled the pandemic because they're deferential to China.

And while there is some truth to each half of that statement, they're not true together.

And let's start with the allegation that the WHO is deferential to China.

For instance, its member states have consistently acquiesced to China's insistence that Taiwan not be allowed to join the organization as a separate entity.

And WHO leadership praised China early in this pandemic, citing its bold approach to contain the rapid spread of the coronavirus, which does not date well.

Although, it is important to remember the WHO needs to be exceedingly diplomatic with its member countries to gain the access it needs for on-the-ground investigations as an outbreak emerges.

Also, for what it's worth, it's not like it was alone in praising China's coronavirus response.

Back in February, Trump was working out a trade deal with China, and he said this.

I've spoken to President Xi, and they're working very hard, and...

If you know anything about him, I think he'll be in pretty good shape.

They're, They've had a rough patch, and I think right now they have it...

It looks like they're getting it under control more and more.

Trump praised China's response so many times, Politico made it into an actual listicle.

And that is a serious unit of measurement.

Trump is joining the ranks of 15 hedgehogs with things that look like hedgehogs, or top 10 actors who died in fires, or 16 people who were literal children in 2010, but full-grown adults now.

Which I have to assume was written by someone who just emerged from a coma and forgot how time works.

Incidentally, making them eligible for Time Magazine's very realistical top 10 comas.

Now, as for the question of whether the WHO made mistakes early on, it definitely did.

It arguably took too long to advise universal mask wearing and to clearly acknowledge the threat of indoor airborne transmission.

But there is no evidence at all that this was done to appease China, so much as in the early stages of a pandemic, even experts tend to, and I'm gonna use a technical term here, not know what the fuck is going on.

But look, let's say, just for the sake of argument, that you agree with the president that we simply pay too much to the WHO and that China is calling all of the shots there.

And if you listen to Mike Pompeo, which you absolutely never should, he would argue the U.S.

If there is a function that only the WHO can do, and we think it is important for American national security because we are good humanitarian partners around the world.

I'm confident we'll find a way to deliver that outcome.

Cannot do what the WHO does for many, many reasons.

For a start, If we try and go into another country for a public health mission, chances are, we're gonna get greeted far less warmly because the WHO has never, you know, invaded a nation or funded a coup.

Representative to the organization has said, people coming into countries in WHO shirts to work on polio or AIDS are less threatening, adding...

Especially having seen the way that we've handled the coronavirus.

Nobody wants a U.S.-based alternative here for the same reason nobody's looking for a Joe Exotic-based alternative to Jeopardy.

I'm not saying he doesn't think he can do it, but everyone likes the way it works now, and his alternative might be actively dangerous.

Also, when it comes to global health, the U.S.

Before the killing of Bin Laden, 1 of the ways the U.S.

Verified he was in Abbottabad was by staging a fake vaccination campaign in that town as a ruse to gather DNA samples from the people living at his compound.

Something which not only put health workers in the region at risk, but also contributed to a major setback in the effort to vaccinate people in Pakistan against polio.

And it is not like we're gonna make friends by suddenly walking away from the WHO and cutting off its funding, especially in the middle of a global pandemic.

Decision to leave is almost impossible to get your head around.

And for staff inside the organization, they feel dumbfounded.

Why take the fire engines away in the middle of fighting the fire?

It's taking the fire engines away in the middle of fighting the fire.

Or getting rid of the lifeboats while the boat is sinking.

Or choosing to edit Kevin Spacey into a movie just weeks before its release date.

It's the worst possible decision at the worst possible time.

Because the WHO is right on the edge of doing to polio what it did to smallpox and eliminating it.

Just 2 months ago, it was finally wiped out in Africa, and we are now 99 percent of the way to global eradication, with a current goal for it to happen in 2023.

Is the second largest funder of the Global Polio Eradication Initiative, and that money suddenly disappearing is likely to set everything back.

And while it feels almost inappropriate for polio not to make a comeback during this fucking nightmare of a year, we should still probably try to prevent that from happening.

But the solution clearly isn't to walk away, it's to try and fix them.

To have a say in how that happens is to have a seat at the table, and we're about to just give that up.

And the thing is, this is yet another depressing example of Trump seeing something that involves shared sacrifice, trade-offs, and complexity, and decided to just blow it up because he either doesn't understand it, doesn't care, or both.

We've seen this with the Paris Climate Agreement and the Iran nuclear deal, and now he's doing it with the World Health Organization.

And this is incredibly dangerous, because the fact is, we're currently on track to leave the WHO on July 6th of next year.

And this means our membership in the WHO is yet another important thing on the ballot this year.

And even though Trump likes to pretend that we can insulate ourselves from the rest of the world, if the coronavirus has shown us anything, it's that diseases don't recognize borders, and we're only as strong as our worst prepared country.

And pulling out of the WHO at any time, but especially in the midst of a pandemic that's killed over 200,000 Americans and a million people around the world, is 1 of the most ill-advised, dumbest things we could possibly do.


Speaker 0: ♪♪ Tonight, I'd like to talk about something incredibly important that hinges on this election because our main story concerns the World Health Organization, or WHO. You may already be aware of it in its role as 1 of the president's favorite punching bags.

Speaker 1: The World Health Organization should be ashamed of themselves. I'm not happy with the World Health Organization. They're a puppet of China. They're China-centric, to put it nicer. They're literally a pipe organ for China.

That's the way I view it.

Speaker 0: Okay, the WHO is not literally a pipe organ for China, because the only thing that is literally a pipe organ for China is a pipe organ, because that's what the word literally means. Over the last 6 months, Trump has consistently tried to deflect blame for his handling of the coronavirus onto the WHO, China, and the close relationship that he claims the 2 have. And at the beginning of July, he turns that criticism into real action.

Speaker 2: In the midst of a pandemic, Donald Trump is formally pulling out of the World Health Organization.

Speaker 1: We will be today terminating our relationship with the World Health Organization and redirecting those funds to other worldwide and deserving, urgent global public health needs.

Speaker 0: Now, that is very bad news. But do spare a thought there for Melania, who must have heard the sentence, we will be today terminating our relationship, and for the briefest of moments, felt hope. Except, I'm totally kidding, spare no thoughts for her. She's not a baby, she's totally complicit, and never forget that she did once say, who gives a fuck about Christmas stuff and decorations? An attitude fully present in her holiday theme, best described as, what if trees got periods and hated you?

The point is, in the midst of everything we're going through right now, Trump has decided to withdraw the United States from the WHO. And if you're thinking, well, surely he can't do that right, the good news is the WHO's constitution doesn't include any provisions for members to withdraw. The bad news is, there's exactly 1 exception to that rule, and it's the United States, which passed a resolution decades ago specifying we actually can withdraw after giving 1 year's notice. And that is a pretty weird perk for America alone to have. It's like finding out we're demanded to be the only country allowed to wax the pubes of every squirrel.

Why would we want the right to do that in the first place? And more to the point, why would we ever consider actually doing it? And the thing is, Trump is not bluffing. He's already submitted a notice of withdrawal to the UN to take effect next July. So the clock is ticking here.

And given that we're now on track to leave the WHO in less than a year, tonight, let's talk about what that actually means, how important the WHO's work is, how valid criticisms of it are, and what we might be putting at stake. And let's start with what the WHO does. It was founded in 1948, and has since grown to 194 member states. That's nearly every country on Earth. And very broadly, it coordinates global responses to a wide range of health issues, including alerting the world to threats, fighting diseases, developing policy, and improving access to care.

1 of the biggest powers it has is the ability to declare a public health emergency of international concern and issue recommendations on how countries should respond. But, and this is really important, it has absolutely no power on its own to enforce those recommendations. It can only act within a country to the extent that country allows it to. And yet, despite those significant limitations, it's managed to do some incredible things in the past, with perhaps its most notable success being this.

Speaker 3: Today, a substantial milestone in human history. The World Health Organization says smallpox has now been wiped off the face of the Earth and will never return. It says it'll never return because smallpox can only be caught from another person, and if no other person has it, there is no other way to catch it.

Speaker 0: It's true. The WHO completely eradicated smallpox, which killed 300 million people in the 20th century alone. In the space of a decade, it took smallpox from 10 million cases and 2000000 deaths a year, all the way down to 0. And it's amazing that something can go from being that widespread to completely disappearing within a few years. Smallpox is basically the circuit city of infectious diseases, and it's equally as missed.

And it's not like the WHO did this with a magic wand. It took a huge amount of work. Not only did they have to arrange a collaboration between America and the USSR at the height of the Cold War, 1 of the last big countries where smallpox had to be tackled was India. And just listen to 1 of the doctors involved in the effort. Explain what it took.

Speaker 2: To eradicate smallpox, it meant that we would have to visit every single house in India. And ultimately, we did. We visited 120 million houses in India every month for about 20 months. We did more than a billion house calls.

Speaker 0: Think about that. They visited a billion houses. That's remarkable. It's only a few more houses than Creschel visited on Selling Sunset. And that's why she's the best.

You pound the pavement. You get the listings, you get the results. I don't know where Creschel hustles more, on the streets of L.A. Or on the Dancing With the Stars dance floor. Hashtag Team Creschel.

But the WHO's work isn't always as lofty as door-to-door disease destruction. Some of its most important work involves the development of the seasonal flu vaccine. Twice a year, it convenes representatives from all over the world to determine what strains of the flu virus should go into the annual flu shot. Which might sound tedious, because it is, but it's also kind of important. And that, by the way, was actually the original title for this show.

The WHO is also currently tracking and responding to dozens of infectious disease outbreaks around the world, including monkeypox, yellow fever, and an ongoing Ebola outbreak. And when, let's say hypothetically, a pandemic breaks out, the organization can provide a critical role as a central clearinghouse of information, conducting investigations, and releasing information to the public. And it does all of this on a current budget of 2.4 billion dollars a year. Which might sound like a lot, but it's around the same amount it costs to run a single U.S. Hospital.

Which is wild. It's like finding out the U.S. Navy runs on the same budget as Typhoon Lagoon at Disney World. I'm not sure if Typhoon Lagoon's budget is way too high, or the Navy's is way too low, but something is definitely off there. So, at its best, the WHO does vitally important work for shockingly little money, which is not to say that it is perfect.

There are legitimate criticisms of how it's behaved in the past, among them, that during the Ebola outbreak In 2014, they acted too slowly to declare a public health emergency, which had major consequences. But the truth is, for Trump, past performance isn't really the issue here. For him, there are 2 insurmountable problems with the WHO, and the first is how much of its budget the U.S. Pays.

Speaker 1: We pay 400 to 500 million dollars a year. China's paying 38, 39, and 40 million dollars a year. And it's like they control this group. There's something very bad going on. And you know what?

I've gotten very much involved. It's been going on for a long period of time. And we don't want to be the suckers anymore.

Speaker 0: Now, you're probably already assuming it's more complicated than that, and it is. The problem is, Trump is incapable of acknowledging nuance. In his world, you're either fucking someone or you're getting fucked. And that's not a great perspective when it comes to cooperating on global health. It's not even a great perspective at an orgy.

Because sure, there's gonna be a lot of both going on, but those can't be the only options. Someone's gotta make sure everyone's staying hydrated. Someone's gotta be available to tip the pizza delivery person. Someone's got to disinfect the coffee table afterwards. It can't all be just fucking and getting fucked, or there's going to be chaos.

That's basic orgy management. Now, what is true in Trump's argument there is that there is a big discrepancy between what the U.S. And China give to the WHO. In 2019, the U.S. Paid just over $446 million, And China, the second largest economy in the world, paid just $43 million.

That is a striking disparity. But it's rooted in how the WHO is funded. Because the fact is, only around 17 percent of its funding comes through assessed contributions, which are basically membership dues based on the size of each country's economy and population. Almost all of the rest comes through voluntary contributions. That's where a country donates money, but in doing so, can earmark exactly what they want it used for.

And most of what the U.S. Pays each year is voluntary contributions, whereas China chooses to pay almost nothing. And you could argue that this is a dumb way to fund an organization. It's essentially the global health equivalent of underfunding a public school and expecting it to hold a bake sale to make up the difference. But the thing is, this whole mess is almost entirely America's fault.

Back in the 1980s, the Reagan administration pushed a 0 growth policy for the WHO's budget, which eventually froze states' assessed contributions at 1990s levels. So, with those contributions unable to go up, the WHO has naturally needed more and more voluntary donations as the years have gone by. And I would say that this was the worst decision of the Reagan White House, were it not for Iran-Contra, the war on drugs, trickle-down economics, and failing to publicly say the word AIDS for 4 years. I'm not saying everything is Reagan's fault. All I'm saying is, if I found out tomorrow that murder hornets are only here because he started breeding them in 1988, I can't say I'd be entirely surprised.

The point is, That is why we pay so much relative to China. It's mostly because we choose to, because the WHO is underfunded, because of something we did. So, what about Trump's second big complaint? The WHO is a literal pipe organ for China, which again, it literally isn't. That is an idea that he and his supporters have hammered hard.

The World Health Organization's subservience to their masters in Beijing has only become more obvious, more naked.

Speaker 1: Allowing the World Health Organization to investigate China is like having El Chapo investigate the Mexican drug cartels. I mean, China lied, the World Health Organization complied, and as a result, many Americans died.

Speaker 0: Okay, now, I know that rhyme sounded compelling, But it is important to remember, not everything that rhymes is true. Here, I'll show you. In 1981, James Comer was up to no good. He stood on a boat and pushed as hard as he could. And that's how James Comer killed Natalie Wood.

That is a fantastic rhyme. No questions there. But I do have to accept that it might be untrue. Now, what they are essentially arguing there is, the WHO mishandled the pandemic because they're deferential to China. And while there is some truth to each half of that statement, they're not true together.

And let's start with the allegation that the WHO is deferential to China. That can be true. For instance, its member states have consistently acquiesced to China's insistence that Taiwan not be allowed to join the organization as a separate entity. And WHO leadership praised China early in this pandemic, citing its bold approach to contain the rapid spread of the coronavirus, which does not date well. Although, it is important to remember the WHO needs to be exceedingly diplomatic with its member countries to gain the access it needs for on-the-ground investigations as an outbreak emerges.

Also, for what it's worth, it's not like it was alone in praising China's coronavirus response. Back in February, Trump was working out a trade deal with China, and he said this.

Speaker 1: China's working very, very hard. I've spoken to President Xi, and they're working very hard, and... If you know anything about him, I think he'll be in pretty good shape. They're, They've had a rough patch, and I think right now they have it... It looks like they're getting it under control more and more.

Speaker 0: Oh, and that was by no means a one-off. Trump praised China's response so many times, Politico made it into an actual listicle. And that is a serious unit of measurement. Trump is joining the ranks of 15 hedgehogs with things that look like hedgehogs, or top 10 actors who died in fires, or 16 people who were literal children in 2010, but full-grown adults now. Which I have to assume was written by someone who just emerged from a coma and forgot how time works.

Incidentally, making them eligible for Time Magazine's very realistical top 10 comas. Now, as for the question of whether the WHO made mistakes early on, it definitely did. It arguably took too long to advise universal mask wearing and to clearly acknowledge the threat of indoor airborne transmission. But there is no evidence at all that this was done to appease China, so much as in the early stages of a pandemic, even experts tend to, and I'm gonna use a technical term here, not know what the fuck is going on. But look, let's say, just for the sake of argument, that you agree with the president that we simply pay too much to the WHO and that China is calling all of the shots there.

The question then becomes, what then? And if you listen to Mike Pompeo, which you absolutely never should, he would argue the U.S. Can just go it alone.

Speaker 4: If there is a function that only the WHO can do, and we think it is important for American national security because we are good humanitarian partners around the world. I'm confident we'll find a way to deliver that outcome.

Speaker 0: Okay, that is just ridiculous. The U.S. Cannot do what the WHO does for many, many reasons. For a start, If we try and go into another country for a public health mission, chances are, we're gonna get greeted far less warmly because the WHO has never, you know, invaded a nation or funded a coup. As 1 former U.S.

Representative to the organization has said, people coming into countries in WHO shirts to work on polio or AIDS are less threatening, adding... Which, of course, they're not. Especially having seen the way that we've handled the coronavirus. Nobody wants a U.S.-based alternative here for the same reason nobody's looking for a Joe Exotic-based alternative to Jeopardy. I'm not saying he doesn't think he can do it, but everyone likes the way it works now, and his alternative might be actively dangerous.

Also, when it comes to global health, the U.S. Has a checkered past. Before the killing of Bin Laden, 1 of the ways the U.S. Verified he was in Abbottabad was by staging a fake vaccination campaign in that town as a ruse to gather DNA samples from the people living at his compound. Something which not only put health workers in the region at risk, but also contributed to a major setback in the effort to vaccinate people in Pakistan against polio.

And it is not like we're gonna make friends by suddenly walking away from the WHO and cutting off its funding, especially in the middle of a global pandemic. As 1 official puts it, the U.S. Decision to leave is almost impossible to get your head around.

Speaker 5: And sometimes it feels like a bad dream. And for staff inside the organization, they feel dumbfounded. Could somebody explain to me why? Really, why? Why take the fire engines away in the middle of fighting the fire?

Speaker 0: Exactly. It's taking the fire engines away in the middle of fighting the fire. Or getting rid of the lifeboats while the boat is sinking. Or choosing to edit Kevin Spacey into a movie just weeks before its release date. It's the worst possible decision at the worst possible time.

And it gets even worse here. Because the WHO is right on the edge of doing to polio what it did to smallpox and eliminating it. Just 2 months ago, it was finally wiped out in Africa, and we are now 99 percent of the way to global eradication, with a current goal for it to happen in 2023. Unfortunately, the U.S. Is the second largest funder of the Global Polio Eradication Initiative, and that money suddenly disappearing is likely to set everything back.

And while it feels almost inappropriate for polio not to make a comeback during this fucking nightmare of a year, we should still probably try to prevent that from happening. And look, it is fine if the U.S. Has problems with the WHO. It has problems. But the solution clearly isn't to walk away, it's to try and fix them.

But the only way for the U.S. To have a say in how that happens is to have a seat at the table, and we're about to just give that up. And the thing is, this is yet another depressing example of Trump seeing something that involves shared sacrifice, trade-offs, and complexity, and decided to just blow it up because he either doesn't understand it, doesn't care, or both. We've seen this with the Paris Climate Agreement and the Iran nuclear deal, and now he's doing it with the World Health Organization. And this is incredibly dangerous, because the fact is, we're currently on track to leave the WHO on July 6th of next year.

If, that is, Trump is re-elected. And this means our membership in the WHO is yet another important thing on the ballot this year. And even though Trump likes to pretend that we can insulate ourselves from the rest of the world, if the coronavirus has shown us anything, it's that diseases don't recognize borders, and we're only as strong as our worst prepared country. And pulling out of the WHO at any time, but especially in the midst of a pandemic that's killed over 200,000 Americans and a million people around the world, is 1 of the most ill-advised, dumbest things we could possibly do. And I mean that fucking literally.

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The World Health Organization: Last Week Tonight with John Oliver (HBO)