United States Completes WHO Withdrawal | Hacker News Reader

United States Completes WHO Withdrawal

hhs.gov

119 pointsSwizec39 comments

> Going forward, the U.S. government will continue its global health leadership through existing and new engagements directly with other countries, the private sector, non-governmental organizations, and faith-based entities. U.S.-led efforts will prioritize emergency response, biosecurity coordination, and health innovation to protect America first while delivering benefits to partners around the world.

The funny thing about this administration is that they label existing system as "bad" and "corrupt", use that as justification to abandon it, and then proceed to recreate the same thing different way.

The point is to enable corruption that benefits current office-holders and prevent any activity, corrupt or not, that benefits anyone else.

See Goldstein, "The Theory and Practice of Oligarchical Collectivism" (1949)

“For if leisure and security were enjoyed by all alike, the great mass of human beings who are normally stupefied by poverty would become literate and would learn to think for themselves; and when once they had done this, they would sooner or later realize that the privileged minority had no function, and they would sweep it away. In the long run, a hierarchical society was only possible on a basis of poverty and ignorance.”

NAFTA bad. USMCA good.

You think they will actually replace it with something similar though. They won't. They have no desire to do that. Even in name. Just like all their other supposed plans - it's just smoke and mirrors and no one will actually do any such thing.

I dunno, reading it in context of the whole statement, "...and its inability to demonstrate independence from the inappropriate political influence of WHO member states" deserves a bit of focus. The UN is structurally designed to give China and Russia outsized influence. Coordinating technical matters like healthcare through the UN does seem a bit unwise given that everyone is posturing up for some sort of Cold-war or potential WWIII style scenario. I don't think we've seen much deescalation of tension in the last decade.

Better to leave the bandwidth of the UN free to focus on diplomacy without distractions, the military situation is urgent.

> The UN is structurally designed to give China and Russia outsized influence.

An interesting assertion. I presume you are implying outsized influence over the US (or do you mean every other country?). I'm honestly curious: can you describe this structural design?

Perhaps they mean that Russia, a corrupted warmonger weak country, has veto power, while more powerful, free and democratic countries have not.

Honestly, ceteris paribus for the US

Thank you sir. Love learning new things every day in a tech forum, especially Latin.

The thing that jumps to mind is the Security Council, which they can parley into diplomatic favours from other people. And the whole point of the UN is that it was the victors of WWII explaining to the rest of the world how international affairs were going to work, so I'd be pleasantly surprised if the special privileges stopped there.

And even without that, the UN isn't really set up to handle technical matters. It is a diplomatic club. The point is to give people a seat at the table without considering their competence.

The Security Council is controlled by the US and its allies (3 out of 5 permanent seats). And the Security Council does not decide on matters of public health like the WHO does. The WHO is staffed by very competent people, certainly more competent than RFK.

The UN has handled several technical matters successfully, including global vaccination programs.

> Coordinating technical matters like healthcare through the UN does seem a bit unwise given that everyone is posturing up for some sort of Cold-war or potential WWIII style scenario.

On the contrary, the fact that we have to coordinate technical matters like healthcare through the UN is a large part of the reason why the Cold War remained cold and we had WW2 within 20 years of WW1 but no WW3 in the 80 years since.

Until the US decided to re-elect a literal madman, the necessity of coordinating on technical matters was obvious to all, which meant these countries weee constantly talking, building relationships and communicating with each other which helped prevent minor conflagrations from escalating.

Art of the Deal

> proceed to recreate the same thing different way

Not a same or similar thing in any way. Everything that is being torn down is being replaced by grifter schemes where all that money is funneled to personal pockets.

> faith-based entities

Look, believe what you want, but praying literally has no known demonstrable deterministic scientific or medical effect on people

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Efficacy_of_prayer

There is literally no point invoking research and factual information into an argument with a religious person.

Not sure how it is in the US but in Germany there are many faith-based entities providing regular health services. Malteser would be one of them.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malteser_Hilfsdienst_e.V.

These church-owned entities in Germany are almost 100% government fincanced [1], while abusing a loophole in the German constitution to discriminate their employees for religious reasons. For example, the Catholic ones are notorious for firing employees that get divorced. This system is an absolute disgrace, but the churches are still too powerful in German society and have so far been able to block any attempt at fixing the constitution.

[1] https://www.malteser-international.org/en/about-us/how-we-wo...

It’s not uncommon in the U.S. either. Providence Health is a Catholic nonprofit that owns 51 hospitals, including several of the big ones in Seattle. It was a big deal when they bought Swedish and people were afraid they would stop offering abortions even in cases of medical necessity.

Parent edited their comment. It used to just say “In Germany.” as if to dismiss the comment for not being about the United States.

I was not intending to say that Catholic healthcare providers in the U.S. are notorious for firing employees who get divorced. In fact, Providence got caught in controversy for firing an employee who refused to provide contraceptives on personal religious grounds.

My point was that they don't get funding to pray and instead provide real medical services.

> the Catholic ones are notorious for firing employees that get divorced

Wow.

catholics> divorce is bad mmkay?

also catholics> refuse to openly discuss the 2 biggest causes of divorce, sex and money

(I once got a dating profile banned... twice... on EHarmony... simply for expressing a sexual preference!)

What makes you think that Catholics don’t discuss money?

And yes, leading with sexual preferences on mainstream dating platforms is creep behavior.

I am ENTIRELY fine with faith providing moral support or justification to tangible human benefits. One of my favorite (and possibly world-famous) hospitals is St. Francis Heart Center https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/St._Francis_Hospital_(Flower_H...

I am not fine with government funds being used to support "prayer" as a means to a more healthy end. In fact I think this arguably violates the 1st Amendment to the Constitution.

I sure wish demonstrable facts had mattered to the constituents at any point in time over the last 10 years.

Amathia runs rife in these people.

I don't know how this is the first time I'm hearing this word, but thank you for that lesson! "Amathia" is indeed a source of evil IMHO.

Earlier: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46727669

The fact that Tedros is still the head while he mishandled completely the biggest catastrophe of our era should be taken seriously.

Not surprising, given the state of healthcare in the US

Maybe the Board of Peace can pick up the slack: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Board_of_Peace

This is extremely disappointing all-around. The World Health Organization was at the forefront of sounding the alarm about COVID-19 early on, and was one of the first to start preparing for the eventuality that it would spread beyond it's origin point. While most people in the US were still saying it wasn't airborne, and downplaying the spread potential and health effects of COVID, the WHO was sounding the alarm on that, too. Ah yes. A little satire does the heart good, you know?

I agree there is only so much an organization can do After the spread, countries themselves have to take action in behalf of the organization's directions and procedures. The U.S. at the time took way too long to act, this was a fact, clearly why some governors were in a tweeting match and arguments over this issue. I do not agree with this direction. Clearly there is alternative motive behind this amongst the multiple other useless withdraws and steps taking at this time.

Finally!

> The WHO delayed declaring a global public health emergency and a pandemic during the early stages of COVID-19, costing the world critical weeks as the virus spread.

Isn't this administrations position that COVID was kinda a nothingburger anyway. Not worth all the fuss?

Not that it's out of the ordinary for this administration, just another grain on an increasingly large pile of hypocrisy sand. Whatever serves their agenda.

> The U.S. is the world’s leading force in protecting public health, saving lives, and responding rapidly to infectious disease outbreaks. Going forward, the U.S. government will continue its global health leadership through existing and new engagements directly with other countries, the private sector, non-governmental organizations, and faith-based entities. U.S.-led efforts will prioritize emergency response, biosecurity coordination, and health innovation to protect America first while delivering benefits to partners around the world.

Firstly, let's update it to "was the world's leading force". Secondly, I hope they're not going to be foisting their newfound vaccine skepticism[0] on the rest of the world. Holy shit if they do.

[0]: https://www.statnews.com/2026/01/22/vaccine-policy-adviser-k...

Some choice quotes in that article.

> I hope they're not going to be foisting their newfound vaccine skepticism[0] on the rest of the world.

Unfortunately they are spreading it. Everywhere US far-right propaganda touches, including via local branches of American Christian denominations, becomes an anti-vax vector.

Brazil is a prime example. We have here a copycat version of the US far-right in the form of Bolsonaro worshippers, aligned with Pentecostal and Neopentecostal churches, spreading anti-vax rhetorics all around social media, to the point it's influencing people outside their bubble.

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