
Who needs the WHO? Americans' poor health leaves us vulnerable.
Who needs the WHO? Americans' poor health leaves us vulnerable. | Opinion As a doctor, I agree with the World Health Organization's lead on emergency response that Americans are more vulnerable when we don't work with scientists from across the globe.
Show Caption
Hide Caption
5 years since COVID-19 declared a global pandemic
Tuesday marks five years since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic. On this day in 2020, the World Health Organization declared a global pandemic, triggering lockdowns across the world.
Fox - 5 DC
Dr. Maria Van Kerkhove, the World Health Organization's technical lead for emergency response, told me in a recent interview on Fox News that she and her colleagues lacked enough information during the COVID-19 pandemic to make critical decisions.
'As you go through any outbreak, you constantly are looking to see, what can we be doing better?' Van Kerkhove said. 'Certainly in the beginning, we did not have all of the information that we wanted. We didn't have all of the information that we needed to be able to make the best decisions that we could at the time. I think as we were learning how this virus was spreading, clearly it was spreading before we really knew largely what was happening.'
Origins of COVID-19 are still unknown
Van Kerkhove said the WHO still doesn't know for certain where the virus originated, knowledge that is key to preventing future pandemics.
Do we need to be more concerned about gain of function research in the lab, the mutation of viruses through natural occurrences, or both? I believe the answer is both, although I am more concerned about intentionally provoking a virus to mutate to forms that are more likely to infect or kill us.
Opinion: I'm a doctor. Five years after COVID, we're not ready for the next pandemic.
The idea of a lab leak was never fully investigated at the beginning of the pandemic because China wouldn't allow it. Nor did Chinese leaders receive enough international pressure to do so.
Van Kerkhove said she deeply regrets the divisiveness that the pandemic spawned, which eventually led to the decision by the U.S. government to withdraw from the WHO. As she noted, viruses don't respect borders.
Yet, she also said that it is easy to overlook the remarkable progress made during the pandemic in treatments, prevention and diagnoses.
'The legacy of COVID cannot be just death and devastation," Van Kerkhove said. "It cannot be the polarization and so much negativity. It has to be the capacities that were built."
"The pathogens that I work on ... with many experts around the world do not respect borders," she said. "They don't care about anyone's political affiliation or how much money you have in the bank. They don't care about the color of your skin. They look for opportunities to spread and to kill. And for me, one of the biggest tragedies right now is a lack of technical exchange with American scientists. And I hope that that changes very quickly because the world is safer with Americans at the table.'
Agreement with RFK Jr. on poor overall health
In a moment of accord rather than discord, Van Kerkhove expressed agreement with Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.'s statement to me in an earlier interview in which he emphasized that malnutrition and poor overall health led to worse outcomes for people with infectious diseases.
She said the fact that so many people around the world had poor baseline health before the pandemic made the toll of COVID-19 much worse.
Opinion: The world desperately needs a pandemic agreement. Will we come together to save lives?
That agreement on the need to improve overall health may be a starting point for the United States and the WHO to reengage.
America's global health outreach has been greatly diminished through cuts to the U.S. Agency for International Development and to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. But continuing to work with the WHO would benefit Americans' health and help protect us against viruses both old and new.
The WHO's leaders have been more critical of China in recent years, and they've reformed the fee structure so that less of the burden is on American taxpayers.
As Van Kerkhove said, we live in a world where deadly pathogens don't respect boundaries. The United States and the world need to support scientists who share information freely who aren't hamstrung by secrets and threats. The WHO can benefit all of us.
Dr. Marc Siegel is a professor of medicine and medical director of Doctor Radio at New York University's Langone Health. His latest book is "COVID: The Politics of Fear and the Power of Science." Follow him on X: @DrMarcSiegel
Hashtags

Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Yahoo
24 minutes ago
- Yahoo
Commentary: How Chinese imports are skirting Trump's tariffs
There's a huge drop underway in Chinese imports entering the US — from China. But Chinese goods are arriving anyway, via other Asian nations such as Vietnam, Thailand, and Indonesia. That may be good news for shoppers, because it means cheap Chinese goods are still making it to US stores despite the higher costs imposed by President Trump's new import taxes. But shifting trade patterns will surely get Trump's attention, and the tariff-happy president could easily put a stop to it by raising import taxes on what are turning out to be loophole countries. Trump's aggressive tariff regime is meant to make most imported products more expensive to encourage more domestic production. But Trump's uneven approach has created opportunities for a kind of trade arbitrage that was all but inevitable. As things stand now, Trump has imposed new import taxes of 30% on most goods from China but only 10% on imports from most other nations. That 20% differential is a big advantage for the less-tariffed countries. Sure enough, trade data shows that Chinese exporters are almost certainly "transshipping" goods to the US by passing them through neighboring countries. Chinese data shows that exports to the US dropped 35% in May compared with a year earlier. But during the same period, Chinese exports to six other Asian nations jumped 15%, including a 22% increase in exports to Vietnam and Thailand, a 12% jump in exports to Singapore, and an 11% rise in shipments to Indonesia. "[China's] direct exports to the US are down sharply, but its exports to all kinds of places across Asia are up massively," economist Robin Brooks of the Brookings Institution posted on social media on June 9. "These are obviously transshipments to the US via third countries."The US Department of Commerce hasn't yet published trade data for May, but data for April shows the mirror image of the Chinese data. Imports from China fell 20% from 2024 levels, while there was a 48% jump in Vietnamese imports, a 32% jump in shipments from Thailand, and a 16% increase in goods from Malaysia. Trade experts have been predicting this shift since Trump began imposing new import taxes in February, because it's the same thing that happened during the trade wars Trump waged during his first presidential term. Vietnam, in particular, was a big beneficiary of Trump's tariffs on Chinese imports in 2018 and 2019. While imports from China fell by 11% from 2017 to 2019, imports from Vietnam boomed by 43%. Read more: What Trump's tariffs mean for the economy and your wallet Since Trump's first trade war, many Asian producers and their US customers have carefully diversified so they're not overdependent on China. The US now imports less clothing from China, as one example, and more from Bangladesh, Indonesia, Pakistan, and India. Transshipment can mean that some products are fully assembled in China and simply make a brief stopover in another country before heading to the US so that their country of origin isn't China. Governments tend to discourage that, however, because those countries gain little from merely serving as a way station for Chinese products headed to the US. Plus, it may attract unwanted attention from Trump. Chinese companies are also increasingly building their own production facilities outside of China. "There are two ways to transship," Jason Judd, executive director of the Global Labor Institute at Cornell University, told Yahoo Finance. "In one, you're just cheating. In the other, you disassemble your product in China and send the inputs and the know-how to a new place." In Cambodia, for example, most of the companies making goods that go to the US have Chinese ownership. Trump's "reciprocal" tariffs — on ice for the moment — are meant, in part, to target countries that are way stations for Chinese products. When Trump announced those nation-by-nation tariffs on April 2, Asian trade partners other than China got hit with some of the highest rates. The new tariff on Chinese imports was 34%. For Cambodia, the new tariff rate was 49%. Vietnam: 46%. Thailand: 36%. Indonesia: 32%. Malaysia: 24%. Those rates weren't based specifically on transshipment of Chinese products but on the size of the trade deficit in goods each country has with the US. The larger the deficit, the higher the tariff. Read more: 5 ways to tariff-proof your finances Trump suspended those tariffs on April 9, following a week of mayhem in financial markets. That eventually left the tariff rates at 30% on most imports from China and 10% on most imports from every other country. But Trump said the reciprocal tariffs could go back into effect if nations don't make trade deals with him one by one by a July 9 deadline. By then, a boom in imports from Asian nations other than China will give Trump plenty of justification for more reciprocal tariffs. But he may choose to overlook it. Trump seems to have a much bigger trade beef with China than he does with other nations. His advisers are also telling him that high tariffs across the board could mean shocking price increases on clothing, electronics, appliances, and many other things just as Americans start their back-to-school shopping this summer. After that will come a Christmas season possibly starring Trump as the Grinch. So Trump might end up talking tough on China and looking the other way as the country's products enter the side door. That would make stealthy Chinese imports an unintended innovation triggered by Trump's trade war. Rick Newman is a senior columnist for Yahoo Finance. Follow him on Bluesky and X: @rickjnewman. Click here for political news related to business and money policies that will shape tomorrow's stock prices.
Yahoo
25 minutes ago
- Yahoo
How viral images are shaping views of L.A.'s immigration showdown
As protesters and police officers clashed in the streets of Los Angeles, a parallel conflict raged on social media, as immigration advocates and President Donald Trump's allies raced to shape public opinion on the impacts of mass deportations on American life. The sprawling protests against Immigration and Customs Enforcement raids were captured from all angles by cellphones and body cameras and streamed in real time, giving a visceral immediacy to a conflict that led to more than 50 arrests and orders from the Trump administration to deploy the National Guard. Subscribe to The Post Most newsletter for the most important and interesting stories from The Washington Post. Amateur videographers and online creators shared some of the mayhem's most-talked-about videos and images, often devoid of context and aimed at different audiences. Clips showing officers firing less-lethal rounds at an Australian journalist or mounted police directing their horses to stride over a sitting man fueled outrage on one side, while those of self-driving Waymo cars on fire and protesters holding Mexican flags stoked the other. The protests have become the biggest spectacle yet of the months-long online war over deportations, as Trump allies work to convince Americans that the issue of undocumented immigration demands aggressive action. But immigrant families and advocates have also been winning attention, and seeking public support, through emotional clips of crying families grappling with removal orders, anti-ICE gatherings and young children in federal custody. The messaging war comes at a time of polarized public sentiment over Trump's immigration policies. An Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research poll in April found that roughly half the country believed Trump's deportations had gone too far, while the other half thought his actions were about right or hadn't gone far enough. 'To advance your side of the story, you need a piece of content that the algorithm likes. You need something that really grabs people's attention by the throat and doesn't let it go,' said Laura Edelson, an assistant professor at Northeastern University's Khoury College of Computer Sciences. 'If you're on the pro-ICE side of this, you need to find visual images of these protests that look really scary, look really dangerous because that's what's going to draw human attention,' she added. But if 'you don't think that ICE should be taking moms away from their families and kids, you're going to have a video that starts with a crying child's face.' A White House official, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal plans, said Trump's digital strategists were following the president's lead by spotlighting images of destruction while insisting that he would always intervene in moments of unrest. The White House, which has said the ICE deportations are necessary to solve a national crisis, on Sunday posted an Instagram photo of Trump and a warning that looters and rioters would be given 'no mercy.' 'We're obviously following the president's direction. He is driving the message through his posts and his comments to the press,' the official said. 'We are definitely playing offense here. We are once again boxing the Democrats into the corner of defending criminal illegal aliens.' The unrest and its online propagation also heightened activity around projects like People Over Papers, a crowdsourced map for tracking the locations of ICE officers. Reports flooded in as the clashes continued, said Celeste, a project organizer in L.A. who spoke on the condition that her last name not be used for fear of government retribution. 'I haven't slept all weekend,' she said. She added, however, that she worried violent imagery from the ground could hurt the protesters' cause. She said she planned to start making Spanish-language videos for her 51,000 TikTok followers, explaining to skeptics that the violence isn't reflective of the protests, which she sees as necessary to counter ICE's agenda. The L.A. unrest followed weeks of online skirmishes over deportations, some of which have been touched off by the White House's strategy to lean into policy fights with bold and aggressive messaging. The White House last month posted a video that it said showed an 'EPIC takedown of 5 illegal aliens' outside a home improvement store and included an ICE hotline to solicit more tips. The clip, recorded by ICE agents' cameras, was liked 68,000 times but also drew criticism from commenters, who called it 'disturbing' and said this 'isn't a reality show.' After a similar ICE raid on Saturday outside a Home Depot in Paramount, a predominantly Latino suburb of L.A., witnesses sent out alerts on social media, and protesters raced to the scene. Within hours, the Trump administration called for the deployment of 2,000 National Guard troops to neutralize the unrest. On his Truth Social account a week earlier, Trump celebrated the Supreme Court clearing the way for the removal of some immigrants' legal protections by posting a photo of a jet-filled sky with the phrase, 'Let the Deportations Begin!' The White House has also posted stylized mug shots of unnamed immigrants it said were charged with heinous crimes. 'I love this version of the white house,' one commenter said, with a cry-laugh emoji. 'It feels like a movie every day with President Trump.' During the protests, the administration has worked with new-media figures and online influencers to promote its political points. Phil McGraw, the TV personality known as Dr. Phil who now runs the conservative media network Merit Street, posted an exclusive interview with border czar Tom Homan and embedded with ICE officers last week during L.A. raids, as the company's spokesperson first told CNN. Some top administration officials have worked to frame the protests in militaristic terms, with White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller on Saturday sharing a video of the protest and calling it 'an insurrection against the laws and sovereignty of the United States.' Others, like Vice President JD Vance, have treated it as a chance for dark jokes. When posters on X said Vance could do the 'funniest thing ever' by deporting Derek Guy, a prominent menswear commentator who discussed how his family had been undocumented after fleeing Vietnam, the vice president on Monday posted a brief clip of Jack Nicholson nodding with a sinister grin. Some far-right influencers urged their followers to identify people caught on camera during the civil unrest. In one X post with more than 29,000 likes, the account End Wokeness shared a video of masked figures throwing rocks at police from an overpass and said, 'These are insurrectionists trying to kill cops. Make them famous.' In more left-leaning online spaces, some posters watching from the sidelines offered advice on how protesters could best position their cause to the rest of the world. On the r/ICE_raids subreddit, some posters urged L.A. protesters to stop carrying non-American flags. It's 'adding ammo to ICE's justification,' one poster said, attaching a screenshot of a Homeland Security post showing masked protesters with Mexican flags. Many accounts, knowingly or unknowingly, shared images that warped the reality of what was happening on the ground. An X account with 388,000 followers called US Homeland Security News, which is not affiliated with DHS but paid for one of X's 'verified' blue check marks, posted a photo of bricks that it said had been ordered to be 'used by Democrat militants against ICE agents and staff!! It's Civil War!!' The photo actually originated on the website of a Malaysian construction-supply company. The post has nevertheless been viewed more than 800,000 times. On Sunday night, California Gov. Gavin Newsom's X account tried to combat some of the misinformation directly, saying a viral video post being passed around as evidence of the day's chaos was actually five years old. Even before the L.A. protests, the increased attention on ICE activity had driven a rush of online organizing and real-world information gathering, with some people opposed to mass deportations tracking the movements of ICE officers with plans to foil or disrupt raids. In one viral TikTok post last week, a Minneapolis protester marching in a crowd outside the site of a rumored ICE raid said he had learned of it from Reddit, where a photo had been posted of Homeland Security Investigations officers outside a Mexican restaurant. The local sheriff's office later told news crews that the operation was not an immigration-enforcement case and that no arrests had been made. Some online creators treated the L.A. clashes as a prized opportunity for viral content. On Reddit, accounts with names like LiveNews_24H posted 'crazy footage' compilations of the unrest and said it looked like a 'war zone.' On YouTube, Damon Heller, who comments on police helicopter footage and scanner calls under the name Smoke N' Scan, streamed the clashes on Sunday for nearly 12 hours. Jeremy Lee Quinn, a photographer who shares protest footage to his social media followers, posted to Instagram on Saturday a video of protesters cheering from a bridge as officers tried to extinguish a burning police vehicle. Quinn, who also documented Black Lives Matter marches and the U.S. Capitol riots, said viewers on the left and right treat viral videos like weapons in their arsenal. Far-left viewers might take away from the videos ideas for militant tactics to use in future protests, he said, while far-right viewers will promote the videos to suggest the other side craves more violent crime. Either way, his material gets seen - including through reposts by groups such as the LibsOfReddit subreddit, which shares screenshots mocking liberal views on undocumented immigrants and transgender people. 'You end up with a far-right ecosystem that thrives on these viral moments,' Quinn said. As short-form video and social media platforms increasingly become many Americans' news sources of choice, experts worry they could also amp up the fear and outrage engendered by polarizing events. The fragmentation of social media and the attention-chasing machinery of its recommendation algorithms helps ensure that 'there are a lot of people talking past each other,' said Northeastern's Edelson, not seeing one another's content or 'even aware of the facts that are relevant to the other side.' Darrell West, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, a Washington think tank, said videos can play a uniquely forceful role in shaping people's reactions to current events because they 'encapsulate the emotion of the moment.' 'There's a heavy dose of misinformation,' he added. 'And, you know, people just end up getting angrier and angrier.' Related Content 'He's waging a war on us': As Trump escalates, Angelenos defend their city To save rhinos, conservationists are removing their horns Donald Trump and the art of the Oval Office confrontation
Yahoo
27 minutes ago
- Yahoo
MSPs vote to introduce scaled-back social care reforms
MSPs have unanimously passed legislation which will allow people in care homes to receive visits from a named loved one even in restricted measures. The Care Reform (Scotland) Bill will also introduce changes to social care procurement and a new right to breaks for unpaid carers. The legislation was backed by 116 votes to none. Plans to introduce a national care service, which were initially part of the bill, were dropped in January after unions withdrew support and a number of health boards and care organisations expressed concerns. One of the big changes planned under the new law is a legal right to breaks for unpaid carers. This mean councils will have a duty to decide whether a carer is able to take sufficient breaks from their caring role. If they are not, then the local authority will provide support to enable this, such as providing funding for short respite breaks. This policy, given Scotland has around 700,000 unpaid carers, will cost between £196m and £315m by 2035/36, according to the Bill's financial memorandum. However, it remains a fraction of the £13.9bn that unpaid care is currently saving Scotland every year. Improvements to the way information is shared in health and social care - to make it less likely that people will have to repeat their information - as well changes to procurement rules in the sector are also planned. Beefing up the powers that watchdogs can take against failing care providers is also part of the bill. The most high-profile part of the Care Reform (Scotland) Bill is Anne's Law, which allows people in care homes to receive visits from a named loved one even in restricted measures. It is named after Anne Duke, who died aged 63 in November 2021 after being cut off from her family while battling early-onset dementia during the Covid pandemic. The original proposal for a National Care Service, inspired by the NHS, was to take social care provision and staff away from local authorities into a new national agency. That was then dropped in favour of creating a national care board to supervise service delivery and improve consistency - but this failed to win over a growing number of critics. Council body Cosla and trade unions then withdrew their support for the project, while a number of health boards and care organisations also expressed concerns. The plan, which was also subject to a series of delays, was eventually scrapped in January after £30m was spent on the process. Social Care Minister Maree Todd said at the time she was "still committed to the ambitions of the National Care Service" but added the SNP no longer had the support it needed in parliament to pass its original plans into law. How the SNP's flagship social care reforms were scaled back Why was Scotland's National Care Service scrapped?