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Call to Action: Speak Up for Transparency in COVID-19 Data
The Trump administration has ordered hospitals to bypass the publicly funded Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), requiring that, effective immediately, all COVID-19 patient information be sent to a privately operated central database in Washington. Although advocates such as CDC Director Robert Redfield argue the new process will streamline data, this change does not conform to any standard patterns of data collection and puts this data in private hands. An unprecedented and poorly managed shift in critical data processing adds burdens to overstretched medical establishments, could compromise or lose essential data, and increases the level of chaos in our national response to a rising health crisis. To combat the…
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Nonsensical: Withdrawing from WHO in the Middle of COVID-19
The World Health Organization (WHO), the leading global health agency, declared COVID-19 a pandemic in March 2020, and within weeks the world had seen more than half a million people infected and nearly 30,000 dead. Infections in the U.S. continue to rise. Yet President Trump has formally notified the United Nations that the U.S. will withdraw from the WHO, bringing its U.S. funding to a halt. The U.S. is, by far, the largest contributor to the WHO’s budget. Trump had initially demanded some changes after accusing the WHO of being both China-centric and slow in its coronavirus response — somewhat validly. However, he didn’t get the response he wanted, so…
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Who’s WHO — and Why You Should Care
As we near 3.5 million cases of the coronavirus and surpass 135,000 deaths, President Donald J. Trump has formally withdrawn the United States from the World Health Organization (WHO). The withdrawal comes on the heels of the president freezing funding to the WHO in April 2020. The U.S. contributes upwards of $400 million annually to the WHO and is the group’s largest contributor (though even before the freeze the U.S. was close to $200 million in arrears to the organization). The claims Trump has made to justify the withdrawal — including that the WHO failed to share information in a timely and transparent manner, gave faulty information, and is too…
