My internet is blowing up over President Trump’s announcement that he wishes to de-fund the World Health Organization (WHO) and pull the US out of the international public health agency. (STAT News and others)

I actually don’t know much about the WHO, how it works, and what it does well (if anything), so I won’t go into the weeds here. But I do want to make a couple of points.

First, who knows whether this will actually happen? Trump threatens / promises all kinds of things that never come to fruition. The US Congress may have the final authority over this spending power.

Second,  what are the practical implications? Probably not as big as you think. I base this on simple budget math. The US is the single largest contributor to the WHO budget, however, the amount of actual money is surprisingly small. From what I can tell (WHO and Kaiser Family Foundation), over the past decade the US is assessed about $100 million per year to the WHO. Some years, the US has voluntarily contributed more (up to $400 million). Given the scale of the WHO mission, this is a pittance. It amounts to somewhere between 25 cents and a dollar for each American, per year. Redirecting this tiny investment in public health to other agencies or organizations (which Trump said he wants to do) seems almost trivial in practical terms.

For comparison, the amount the US spends on our own Centers for Disease Control (CDC) is between 6 and 7 billion dollars per year (2020 budget; previous years), of which about $500 million went specifically to global health (such as HIV/AIDS, TB, and vaccination) and an additional $600 million went to emerging infections.

My assessment: There’s no question Trump is thinking about this issue in political and electoral terms, not in terms of actual public health. But because of the relatively small amount of US dollars involved, I hope the consequences of any Trump action to remove the US from the WHO will also be largely political and electoral, not so much in public health.

I also find it interesting that Trump is essentially making two mutually contradictory arguments: that global public health efforts don’t matter and therefore the US can just walk away from the WHO; and that if the WHO had not been influenced by China, somehow the WHO could have contained SARS-CoV-2 in Wuhan. I do not believe the second proposition (this coronavirus is too contagious), but if it were true, then surely we need the WHO in future?

Amy Rogers, MD, PhD, is a Harvard-educated scientist, novelist, journalist, and educator. Learn more about Amy’s science thriller novels, or download a free ebook on the scientific backstory of SARS-CoV-2 and emerging infections, at AmyRogers.com.