“If we’ve learned anything from this car crash [the COVID-19 pandemic] it’s that these diseases pose a huge threat across the entire world, and the best thing we can do is contain them where they start,” Dach explains. “No one is saying that the organization is perfect, but it does an essential job.”

How is the WHO working to stop the spread of COVID-19?

All member countries are required to report any disease outbreaks of unknown origin that seem as if they may spread internationally. On Dec. 31, 2019, China declared an outbreak of what it called pneumonia cases in Wuhan, Hubei province. The organization alerted its incident management support team and tweeted about the incidences on Jan. 4, 2020. By Jan. 10, the WHO had set up and posted guidelines on how to stop the spread of the disease, warning that it was similar to SARS and MERS. .

By the end of January, the WHO had labeled the disease a Public Health Emergency of International Concern. Since then, the organization has gathered vital information from all member countries and has published much on what it has found in that data. The agency has issued recommendations on how to reopen, when to wear masks, and testing protocol. It has also provided online training for health care workers.

Why is President Donald Trump threatening to defund the WHO?

In mid-April President Trump declared that he’d had enough of the WHO’s guidelines and would freeze its funding indefinitely, pending further review from his administration. He blamed the WHO for not investigating the disease quickly enough when it originated in China, leaving the U.S. unprepared.

Critics of Trump say the President’s actions were intended to deflect any blame. There have since been more than 85,000 confirmed deaths directly related to COVID-19 in the United States.

Democrats called the President out for “scapegoating.”

“Right now, there is a very coordinated effort amongst the White House and their allies to try to find scapegoats for the fatal mistakes that the President made during the early stages of this virus,” said Sen. Chris Murphy. “It is just wildly ironic that the President and his allies are now criticizing China or the WHO for being soft on China when it was in fact the President who was the chief apologist for China during the early stages of this crisis.”

Legal roadblocks also lie ahead. Democrats in Congress called the move illegal, saying that Trump couldn’t stop the payment of that assessed contribution. The President, however, still has the support of congressional Republicans, and any serious action taken against him would likely be blocked in the Republican-led Senate.

“President Trump is violating the same spending laws that brought about his impeachment,” said Evan Hollander, spokesman for the House Appropriations Committee. During the impeachment fight, the U.S. Government Accountability Office said that the President was in violation of the law by delaying funding that Congress had approved to go to Ukraine.

Countries like China and Japan have said they will step up their donations, but it is unlikely that they would be able to fill a void as large as the one left by U.S. funding. Still, Dach says, this decision could leave the U.S. at a disadvantage in slowing COVID-19’s spread.

“If you want WHO to do the most effective job it can, you want to be at the table, you want to be able to have a conversation with them,” he says. “During Ebola, because of our contribution, our opinions mattered, and it was to America’s benefit to be able to have its voice change the behavior of WHO. They spent their money more wisely, and they spent it in places and ways we thought were the most important. Now we’re just taking that off the table.”

It’s unclear if the President intends to pull voluntary funding or to leave the World Health Assembly altogether. The former would mean that the U.S. would retain its role as a governing body, but the latter would mean the country no longer had any say in the future of the organization. It would also no longer be obligated to report any information or health statistics to the group.

Even the WHO’s biggest advocates admit that the organization isn’t perfect, but they say that things would be much worse without its help.

“During an unprecedented and hugely complex public health crisis like this, there are bound to be challenges,” wrote over 1,000 health care experts, companies, and charities in a recent letter to President Trump, urging him to continue with funding.

“After WHO and the global community turn the tide against COVID-19, WHO has signaled an eagerness to assess where mistakes occurred and how best to strengthen the institution and global public health response capacities of all countries in the future,” they continued. But, they added, “it is without question…that WHO efforts have been vital to flattening the curve, slowing the virus’s spread, and ultimately saving lives in the U.S. and around the world.”