US Formally Withdraws From WHO (nytimes.com)
- Reference: 0180642952
- News link: https://science.slashdot.org/story/26/01/23/1226253/us-formally-withdraws-from-who
- Source link: https://www.nytimes.com/2026/01/22/us/politics/united-states-withdraws-world-health-organization.html?unlocked_article_code=1.GlA.ey5P.2X66jrh_mNPI&smid=url-share
> While the United States is walking away from the organization, a senior official with the Department of Health and Human Services told reporters on Thursday that the Trump administration was considering some type of narrow, limited engagement with W.H.O. global networks that track infectious diseases, including influenza.
>
> As a W.H.O. member, the United States long sent scientists from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to participate in international decision-making about which strains to include in the flu vaccine. A W.H.O. meeting on next year's vaccine is scheduled for February. The official said the Trump administration would soon disclose how or whether it will participate.
>
> On Thursday, the administration said that all U.S. government funding to the organization had been terminated, and that all assigned federal employees and contractors had been recalled from its Geneva headquarters and its offices worldwide.
[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2026/01/22/us/politics/united-states-withdraws-world-health-organization.html?unlocked_article_code=1.GlA.ey5P.2X66jrh_mNPI&smid=url-share
Third world country status attained (Score:5, Insightful)
Great job, y'all.
Re: (Score:2)
More like "Shithole country status attained".
Re: (Score:1)
Marxism is only normal if you intend to kill millions and impoverishing everyone else. It was tried in Russia and killed millions, it was tried in China and killed millions, it was tried in Cambodia and killed millions... it was tried in Venezuela and is still killing people. Marxism killed more people than Nazi eugenics. Anyone advocating Marxism today could only be malicious villain or a fool with no knowledge of history.
The dumbification of the population is in full (Score:2)
swing. The dumber the population the more votes they can get.
WHO (Score:1)
Well, we can watch the Classic series (Hertnell to McCoy) on BritBox, but what about the modern series (Eccelstone - current} ?
My streaming provider is Amazon.
whose slogan is “Well it happened.” (Score:5, Funny)
Pete Hegseth will now head up its replacement: the World Infection Organization, which will operate under the new Office of Preventable Outcomes.
Re: (Score:2)
> Pete Hegseth will now head up its replacement: the World Infection Organization.
More like the "World Health Infection Federal Foundation" (WHIFF) - you could say he's taking a whiff at it.
Re: (Score:2)
Given how much he and his camp obsessed over chinese bioweapons being behind covid, I wonder if that research might be spinning back up under his leadership. Thought that might be a bit too cerebral for them.
Re: (Score:2)
Better known as the Preventable Outcomes Office (POO)
Re: whose slogan is “Well it happened.&r (Score:2)
more like Preventable Events Directorate Office
Re: (Score:2)
That's horrible! RFK Jr. *earned* that post, dammit!
Yes, but we're in the Board of Peace! (Score:5, Funny)
"The most prestigious Board of Leaders ever assembled, at any time." Along with Saudi Arabia, Belarus, Hungary, and Uzbekistan.
Re: (Score:2)
> More like the board of fleece
or the "Board of Fleas"
Prove US wrong (Score:2)
There goes $1.2 Billion in funding. Guess we'll find out WHOs health care system is better.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Well, we know which territory is having a completely preventable measles outbreak on account of it embracing anti-vaxxing, so there's no need to guess.
Re: (Score:2)
Better hope no new diseases break out then. [1]Moderna Curbing Investments [slashdot.org] Don't think other drug companies won't follow.
[1] https://science.slashdot.org/story/26/01/22/1743240/moderna-curbing-investments-in-vaccine-trials-due-to-us-backlash-ceo-says?sbsrc=md
Re: Prove US wrong (Score:2)
Canada? [1]https://globalnews.ca/news/110... [globalnews.ca]
[1] https://globalnews.ca/news/11088746/measles-outbreak-canada-affected-areas/
Re: (Score:2)
Proof that the stupidity is leaking. There are smooth brains in Canada flying trump flags.
Re: (Score:3)
Only 1/80th the budget of ICE [1]https://www.npr.org/2026/01/21... [npr.org]
[1] https://www.npr.org/2026/01/21/nx-s1-5674887/ice-budget-funding-congress-trump
Re: Prove US wrong (Score:2)
A lot of Americans seem ..... very very bad with numbers
Re: Prove US wrong (Score:2)
They can buy 18 F-35s with that money so they can steal more resources
Makes sense (Score:2)
As the CDC said, disease is the cost of doing business
Hopefully this kills them (Score:2, Insightful)
Many other countries are still subject to the whims of communist enemies in the WHO.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
I realise throwing around words like "communism" and "socialism" is a reliable way to get people in the USA to vote against their own interests, but it doesn't work on the rest of the world.
Re: (Score:1)
They are not confusing it, they don't care. For that camp, 'communist' is just their label for godless (non white) heathens who do not worship correctly.
Re: (Score:1)
> ...godless (non white) heathens who do not worship correctly.
The default leftist explanation for everything they don't like - racism. Stop acting NPC.
Re: (Score:2)
You couldn't explain any of the *ism insults without googling them.
Re: Hopefully this kills them (Score:2)
Sorry I thought that was what "woke" meant.
It's hard to keep track
Re: (Score:2)
Yeah, woke is their new code word. communist is more of a boomer whistle.
Re: (Score:1)
It's a good start. I'd be happier with "UN out of the US and US out of the UN" but we've got three years to go
Re: (Score:2)
What are your reasons?
Re: (Score:2)
Because the USSR was the reason for the UN, and Russia is currently failing to beat Ukraine. Therefore, the UN can't possibly be necessary.
Re: (Score:2)
This is 2026, not 1955. Calling someone a communist is not fighting words.
Years needed to undo the stupidity (Score:3, Insightful)
Eventually there will be a sane person leading USA again, unfortunately a lot of time of that term will be needed just to reverse all the current stupidity..
Re:Years needed to undo the stupidity (Score:4, Informative)
"Years"?!?
This will take decades to undo, if not generations (if ever).
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Yeah, this is why the process of moving from democracy to autocracy is so hard to reverse. After a purge, starting a counter purge just gets you locked into a new cycle where institutions just keep getting weaker... and letting them regrow take, well, about the same amount of time it took to build them in there first place, so you are looking at generations. Worse yet, that generally doesn't work since you still have the impact of the initial purge and it's power over institutions.
Historically, the way t
Re:Years needed to undo the stupidity (Score:5, Interesting)
Canadian here.
Sure, the US might elect a sane person again one day, along with a sane majority in Congress, but then four years later you'll just elect another maniac.
Your country not trustworthy and is hopelessly broken.
I mean how insane is it that our Government made the decision that in 2026 business with CHINA was a safer bet than business with the USA? Madness.
Re:Years needed to undo the stupidity (Score:5, Informative)
> I mean how insane is it that our Government made the decision that in 2026 business with CHINA was a safer bet than business with the USA? Madness.
It is madness that PM Carney decided that antagonizing US is the right move for Canada. All heated rhetoric aside, Canada currently enjoys one of the lowest tariffs of any country while still enjoying its domestic protectionism for dairy/etc. and while not having to spend any money on military that afford many social programs that are above and beyond what is available in US. You might not like to admit it, but US subsidizes Canada's standard of living a great deal and reduction in these subsidies is warranted.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
What a screwball point of view to call out Canada as antagonizing the US, when the US started a trade war with Canada and has gone so far as to actually threaten annexation. And you think Canada doesn't spend money on its military? It has a massive military for a country of its population size, and has an equally massive reputation both for its peacekeeping and participation in major wars. Canada has been the U.S.'s best trading partner since WWII. "Subsidizing" is a bullshit term for trade deficits. The U.
Re: (Score:2)
> It has a massive military for a country of its population size, and has an equally massive reputation both for its peacekeeping and participation in major wars
That was decades ago. Canada spends next to nothing on military, no longer participates in peacekeeping, and has 70s-era helicopters falling out of the sky and 80s-era used submarines that are not seaworthy. Seriously, look it up.
Re:Years needed to undo the stupidity (Score:4, Interesting)
Canada is doubling its military spending this year, up to over $60B, at 2% of GDP. I don't know what goalposts you need to keep moving to get from "not having to spend any money on military" to "next to nothing on military" to eventually get to those numbers, but good luck with that.
Re: (Score:2)
> has 70s-era helicopters falling out of the sky and 80s-era used submarines that are not seaworthy. Seriously, look it up.
[Citations needed]
Re:Years needed to undo the stupidity (Score:5, Insightful)
So much there in that short paragraph. Saying Canada shouldn't antagonize Trump is fine, but the problem is there's *nothing* we can do that *won't* antagonize him and nothing we can do to placate him, short of inviting him to come be a king. What can Greenland do to not antagonize him (what can Ukraine do to not antagonize Putin)? See the problem?
The last trade agreement trump himself signed granted quite a bit of access to the Canadian dairy market up to a certain cap, which has never been reached, so those high diary tariffs have never been levied. Trump is lying about them. But even further, if Canada opened up the the entire dairy market, while it would destroy the entire Canadian dairy industry in one fell swoop it would hardly register as a blip on the scope for the fortunes of American dairy. A lot of American companies don't realize how small the Canadian market is compared to the entire US market. Canada is littered with the corpses of US companies who tried to enter completely unprotected markets. Lowes and Target to name two. Besides that, to eliminate the trade imbalance Canadians would have to buy 10 times the number of US products. How many cars does Trump want us to buy? 10 per person?
As far as tariffs go, you want the US to reduce its "subsidization" of Canada by... taxing Americans? It's absolutely bonkers to me how GOP voters are so excited about some of the biggest tax raises the US has had in decades. Yes tariffs hurt Canada and drag our economy down. Congrats on that. But they are a tax on US citizens!
As far as broken relationships go, so many of my friends and relatives in the US think that things will go back to normal after Trump's done in three years. But I just don't see any possible way that's going to happen.
Re:Years needed to undo the stupidity (Score:4, Interesting)
> It is madness that PM Carney decided that antagonizing US is the right move for Canada.
You're going to have to explain this one. What did Canada do to antagonize the US? Wasn't cheeto calling Canada the 51st state and talking about annexation? The PM offers a coherent speech and of the thinnest skinned person of all gets upset.
> Canada currently enjoys one of the lowest tariffs of any country
You do understand that we're paying tariffs and not Canada?
Re: (Score:2)
>> I mean how insane is it that our Government made the decision that in 2026 business with CHINA was a safer bet than business with the USA? Madness.
> It is madness that PM Carney decided that antagonizing US is the right move for Canada. All heated rhetoric aside, Canada currently enjoys one of the lowest tariffs of any country while still enjoying its domestic protectionism for dairy/etc. and while not having to spend any money on military that afford many social programs that are above and beyond what is available in US. You might not like to admit it, but US subsidizes Canada's standard of living a great deal and reduction in these subsidies is warranted.
The USA currently enjoys one of the lowest tariffs in Canada of any country while still enjoying its domestic protectionism.
It works both ways. Read up on MFN and 'reciprocity'.
Re: (Score:2)
> That's exactly what Trump WANTS PEOPLE TO THINK!! Don't speak out against Trump or bad things will happen! This is how Trump controls everyone! Well you know what, that was tried for a year and bad things happened anyway. The only way to stop a bully is to stand up to him without sinking to his level and that is what Carney is doing.
> Posted as AC because I upvoted some comments that deserved it.
Re: (Score:2)
What Trump says is not inherently wrong, if you reflexively oppose everything then you will be wrong many times. Trump is not diplomatic, his rhetoric on Canada is appalling. He is not wrong in pointing that in US-Canada trade, Canada disproportionately benefits from the relationship. Canada is also very protectionist of its domestic industries, diary, eggs, meat, lumber, etc. are all highly regulated in Canada in a way to prevent US from entering these markets. From Canadian point of view these are necessa
Re: (Score:2)
> Canada disproportionately benefits from the relationship.
Show your work.
Re:Years needed to undo the stupidity (Score:5, Informative)
> Eventually there will be a sane person leading USA again, unfortunately a lot of time of that term will be needed just to reverse all the current stupidity..
As far as the rest of NATO is concerned, especially the UK following Trumps unbelievable insult about our troops in Afghanistan where he said we weren't near the front line, you're going to be way longer than one term or even one consecutively twice elected President before those bridges Trump has dynamited get rebuilt. Trump with that one flippant remark in his Fox News interview has managed to piss off pretty much all of the public in the UK, a nation that doesn't fetishize it's military like the US does. The Liberal Democrat Party President Josh Babarinde MP even posted on X "Trump can go fuck himself." The UK public is rapidly turning away from the US and all things US.
Just put tariffs on countries with diseases... (Score:5, Funny)
Meah.... nothing to worry about.
The US has never been healthier than during this presidency. It is amazing how good the presidency is. He deserves Nobel Prize in Medicine for that.
If anything happens there is 3 level ironclad disease protection:
1. sue anyone complaining about it
2. threaten countries with diseases with tariffs
3. blame Biden for everything
Re: (Score:2)
I thought Fauci was their scapegoat.
Re: (Score:2)
And don't forget, he single handedly stopped autism a few months ago. Two Nobel prizes in medicine then.
And yes, that was sarcasm. Poe's law is very true.
Republicans are out of ideas (Score:3, Insightful)
They have nothing that can help you economically so they're getting into more culture War bullshit and anti-vax insanity as a replacement for real economic gaines. It's the circuses without the bread
Re: (Score:2)
> It's the circuses without the bread
I'd say it's an all-inbred circus.
Re: (Score:1)
You are largely correct on economics, but you just don't understand how angry people are about getting locked down for 2 years. What you are seeing is blow back for closing schools, destroying small businesses, mandating jabs, censoring anyone deviating from the approved messaging, etc.
Title correction: (Score:1)
"Magastan Formally Withdraws From WHO"
There FTFY.
WHO is a front for China (Score:1, Insightful)
Withdrawal from WHO is about mitigating effects of [1]Chinese influence [cfr.org]. Lets not memory-hole that WHO was very late in declaring COVID19 emergency because of its emergence in China. Also, don't forget about recently adopted WHO Pandemic Agreement that does nothing to address China's refusal to allow international inspection teams but overrides intellectual property rights in case of declared emergency (i.e., it heavily favors China over US).
[1] https://www.cfr.org/blog/who-and-china-dereliction-duty
Re: (Score:3)
No, withdrawal from the WHO is letting China gain more power over the WHO. There was not a single thing that the WHO did when the US was member that the US wasn't onboard with, aka it was the US that controlled WHO.
Re: (Score:1)
> No, withdrawal from the WHO is letting China gain more power over the WHO
US is not obligated to contain China for the benefit of the rest of the world. Not being part of WHO, Chinese dominance is now someone else's problem.
Grammar Correction (Score:4, Funny)
I think that should be " We formally withdraw from WHOM "
+1 (Score:2)
Ha, grammatically goodly.
Self own, that'll show em' (Score:2)
These institutions were magnificent stores of soft power abroad. Voluntarily dismantling the thing you built for some very small political points on the domestic stage is really very smart.
Re: (Score:2)
Sadly they never invented a vaccine for lead paint chips.
Backwards into stupidity we go (Score:4, Insightful)
They are going to kill a lot of people before they are finished. They imagine they can beat the whole world.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
One nice thing is this will help to reduce the world's population, thus helping to mitigate the effects of climate change.
They'd be so upset if they knew they were helping the planet recover.
Re: (Score:2)
Personally I think your comment wins the discussion.
Going the way of the dinosaurs? (Score:2)
Actually reminds me of teaching basic English debate to Japanese students. Most years I used a debate proposition about smoking cigarettes and killing people off was one of the stronger affirmative arguments that got used pretty often.
Currently reading T. Rex and the Crater of Doom and it has me thinking about extinction events again. The book is about a large one provoked by a major disaster, and I actually don't believe we humans yet have that capability, even with all of our nuclear bombs. However I th
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
It's a little weird to me that the people who advocate for vaccines to save lives (I would count myself among them) are often the ones who also perpetuate the myth that the human population is continuing to explode into some kind of Malthusian standing-room-only overpopulated future. While vaccinations improve quality of life substantially, rapid population decline due to very low birth rates will drastically reduce wellbeing. This is just basic logic. The specialization needed to maintain a high tech soc
Re: (Score:2)
We have 8 billion+ people on the planet. We can afford to lose a billion or so and not affect our ability to advance science. Having fewer people would definitely enhance wellbeing as there would be less pollution which means cleaner air and water. Less trash would be produced as well.
Clearly we had no problem with scientific advancements when our population was lower. With what we have now, why would you think fewer people would change that?
Re: (Score:3)
Our real problem is longer life spans and people living longer, much longer after they have retired. In the meantime, birthrates worldwide are imploding, not just in the West, but even in the most populous ones - China, India,.... At this rate, there won't be enough people for the workforce (which may not be a problem if AI succeeds in filling any gaps in the workload), but there will be more retirees than ever
Maybe we can wait for humanity to go extinct, and then "watch" what happens to the world in te
Re: (Score:3)
This comment for the win. It's important to remember that a hell of a lot of amazing advances were made in the 20th century when the population started out at about 1.75 billion in 1900 and ended at about 6 billion in 2000. I really doubt there's an advantage to having 8 billion instead of 6, or even 4 - it doesn't drive markets or innovation any faster, except that perhaps people are suffering *more* due to malnutrition and inability to access medical services; but those calamities don't appear to be drivi
Re: (Score:2)
While we are not heading for some population bomb doomsday scenario, even at current population levels and resource utilization rates, we are headed for a cliff sometime in the next couple of hundred of years, if not sooner. Much of our farming relies on aquifers that are being drained faster than they are naturally replenished, and fertilizer that uses phosphorus dug up from mines. Both of these resources are used one and then are basically flushed into the ocean, with very little effort made towards rec
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
We can definitely see that this is true, because they've killed a lot of people already.
[1]https://hsph.harvard.edu/news/... [harvard.edu]
[2]https://responsiblestatecraft.... [responsibl...ecraft.org]
[3]https://theintercept.com/2025/... [theintercept.com]
[1] https://hsph.harvard.edu/news/usaid-shutdown-has-led-to-hundreds-of-thousands-of-deaths/
[2] https://responsiblestatecraft.org/us-weapons-gaza/
[3] https://theintercept.com/2025/06/05/trump-travel-ban-afghanistan/
Re: Backwards into stupidity we go (Score:3)
Don't forget the excess deaths from COVID. Last time i looked USA had 3-4x the per capita deaths when compared to Canada.
Re: (Score:1, Informative)
COVID response was up to the states with federal support. The Trump admin wasn't the one issuing lockdown orders, banning seeds, letting people set fire to cities, or putting up with Seattlites seceding.
Re: (Score:2)
US is 2.5x of Canada. What surprises me more is the UK was almost right there with the US, and the EU as a whole wasn't all that low. Japan is probably the lowest of nations you would actually trust to keep statistics on it.
Excerpted from [1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
Country | Deaths / million | Vs. USA
- - -
United States | 3608 | 1.00x
United Kingdom | 3404 | 0.94x
European Union | 2829 | 0.78x
Canada | 142
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/COVID-19_pandemic_death_rates_by_country
Re: (Score:2)
The US benefits massively from being so large that even though you have cities like New York and LA, massive amounts of the population lives in areas where the population density is really low. Hence even though lots of people in the red states refused to wear masks there where no one close to transmit covid to, compare this with Europe where every single country is as densly populated as New York city.
Re: (Score:2)
They got you with the "per capita" part. It's like comparing the taxes of the rich and the poor. You can say rich pay 2% and poor pay 25%. Or you can say rich pay $800 million and poor pay $1000. Just depends on how you say it.
Re: (Score:2)
Maybe the rest of the world can step up. Big opportunity to replace the US now. China is a big contributor, maybe they will. The EU should.
Fred Thompson said it best (Score:3)
Admiral Josh Painter: "This business will get out of control. It will get out of control and we'll be lucky to live through it." - The Hunt for Red October
Re: (Score:2)
You mean the [1]United Nations Register of Conventional Arms. [unroca.org] It's not a gun registry in the sense I think you're trying to imply. It's a database that's intended to track transfers of military arms (tanks, aircraft, ships, etc.) between countries.
I don't see the USA withdrawing from either as a Good Thing (TM).
[1] https://www.unroca.org/
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
It's unfortunate for Americans that didn't vote for this nonsense have to live through the experience of knowing our country is now a villain on the world stage. There have always been things to be ashamed of, but until now it's always been easy to at least convince yourself the US does more good than bad. That is unfortunately the past now.
Re: (Score:2)
Speak for yourself, I remember a recent democrat president saying "If you like your health care plan, you'll be able to keep your health care plan, period"; This turned out to be false, didn't it?
Re: (Score:3)
It is very difficult for an honest person to foresee the level to which dishonest people will stoop to. That democrat president was guilty of wishful thinking and that's about all.
Re: (Score:2)
This. Obama said if you like your health-care plan, you can keep it. He couldn't promise that the health insurance companies would keep it.
Re: (Score:2)
"our country is now a villain on the world stage". Only now. Yeah... riiiiight.
Re: (Score:2)
That's a rash assumption. I presume that you think that European, Asian, Oceanic, and African governments aren't going to make up the monetary and intellectual deficits left by the USA's withdrawal?
MAGA "logic" (Score:2)
MAGAs' reasoning is often that because subject matter experts are sometimes wrong, their special Jesus-induced gut-feelings are more accurate. But such SJIGF's have proven even worse than experts in the past. (It was called "alchemy" and "snake-oil".)
"But those in the past were the wrong sect" or whatnot is given as an excuse. Whether that's true or not, the current group of SJIGF's needs to demonstrate their accuracy over a reasonable time before we allow them to override experts. "Just trust us because we