Hantavirus made me reconsider the World Health Organization. Trump should too.

The World Health Assembly, the main decision making body of the World Health Organization, is meeting this year in Geneva starting next Monday. This meeting may represent the last chance for the U.S. to reverse course and remain a member of the WHO. 

The organization’s superb handling of the ongoing hantavirus outbreak is the main reason I believe the U.S. should stay. WHO has taken the lead since May 2, when it received confirmation that a passenger on a Dutch-flagged cruise ship which departed from Argentina on April 1 tested positive for the infection. 

Back at the beginning of the COVID-19 outbreak in 2020, I was a big critic of the WHO. I felt they were too close to China and it clouded their vision at a time the emerging pandemic had already spread beyond China into Europe.

But things have changed since then, and I have changed my mind, as I would urge President Trump to do now. Viruses don’t obey borders, as the hantavirus outbreak is showing. Even as we quarantine passengers and investigate their contacts in the U.S. in Texas, New Jersey, Georgia, California, Virginia, Arizona and Nebraska, we are relying on information being obtained and distributed by the WHO.

I personally have been in direct contact with Dr. Maria Von Kerkhove, an extremely knowledgeable American infectious disease........

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