How will the US return to the World Health Organization affect the spread of the new Omicron Variant of Coronavirus?

 How will the US return to the World Health Organization affect the spread of the new 

Omicron Variant of Coronavirus?

In July of 2020, President Donald Trump drafted a letter to the United Nations declaring US intention of exiting the World Health Organization. Despite different claims of the reasoning behind the withdrawal, that the withdrawal had to do with the huge amounts of funding the organization required, it’s poor handling of the pandemic, or even just a protectionist attitude towards his own people, Trump’s declaration marked an important moment in the Pandemic. It pointed to the idea that the WHO had been “slow to respond to the pandemic,” and “too ‘China-centric,’” and that the US need not pay so much to be a part of such an organization. (NPR) But critics of this withdrawal, including Senator Bob Menendez of New Jersey, claimed that all it did was leave “Americans sick and America alone.” Due to critiques like this, President Joe Biden moved to rejoin the WHO almost immediately after his election at the end of 2020, a decision which was applauded heavily by the scientific community. But, the recent emergence of the Omicron Variant out of South Africa raises the question of whether or not the decision by Biden to rejoin the WHO was a smart decision. Will the inevitable costs of this new variant’s consequences abroad outweigh the benefits of membership to the WHO? Or was Biden’s decision to rejoin the organization the right decision for America?

An article in NPR explains that, “a letter to Congress dated June 30, 2020,” drafted by 750 experts in global health, warned that Trump’s potential  “withdrawal (would) likely cost lives, American and Foreign… by cutting crucial funds to the WHO’s health emergencies program for testing, contact tracing and vaccine development, and prolonging the pandemic.” It was to avoid consequences like this, that Biden decided to rejoin the World Health Organization. This decision was both practical, in the sense that US funding could, “help the agency balance its budget, fulfill its commitments to boost public health, and protect Americans from new strains of Covid-19 and future disease threats,” and symbolic, demonstrating the US’s return to its former status as the largest funder and influencer on the global health stage.  (USA Today) So, with the emergence of a new variant of the virus, one that yields “unusually high numbers of mutations, is more easily transmissible, better able to evade Covid-19 treatments and natural or vaccine-induced immunity, or might cause more severe disease,” it is evident that Biden’s decision was not only justified, but necessary for a quick and efficient response to the pandemic. (New York Magazine)

However, the argument can also be made that global health organizations are too Western Centric as it is, and the US withdrawal may have been a good decision for the countries in the periphery, as the consequences of the pandemic there could be of more central focus to the organization. One article in the New York Times explains that as African countries scramble to shut down in response to the new Omicron variant, they blame the “West’s hoarding of vaccines,” for the origin of their struggle in the first place. While it is true, according to the UN, that only 3.07% of people in lower income countries have been vaccinated in comparison to 60.18% in higher income countries, and that this disparity may have been behind the emergence of the new variant in South Africa, it cannot be proven that US withdrawal from the WHO could have changed anything. Although the US's exit from the WHO could have isolated America in terms of provision of global health support and would have denied it a role in global decision making, there is no proof that it would have decreased its own provision of the vaccine, thus increasing vaccine availability in other, poorer countries. Overall, it cannot be concluded that had the US failed to rejoin the World Health Organization, the Omicron virus would have been less likely to occur. Rather, one could even argue that had the US not rejoined the WHO, periphery countries that are now being bombarded by the new variant would be in even worse shape, without the financial and physical support of US aid.

Thus, we can see that Biden’s decision was justified, and a World Health Organization without the US would be far more ill-equipped to handle the emergence of a new variant than one with US support. Nevertheless, it is evident that the US’s rejoining of the WHO has not solved all of the world’s problems. There is still a hugely disproportionate amount of citizens vaccinated in poorer countries than in more developed countries. As Francois Venter, a researcher at the University of Johannesburg put it, “it feels like these rich countries have learned absolutely nothing in terms of support.” While it is clear that Biden’s decision reflects a somewhat powerful lesson for the US, that our aid is necessary for a global effort to stop the pandemic, we can also see that there is a long way to go for global health justice to be achieved. And that justice starts with a proper handling of the new Omicron Variant, one that will require the US’s support.