‘A breakdown across many decades’: Former WHO communications chief reflects on pandemic disinformation and U.S. withdrawal

‘None of us believed it would escalate to a full withdrawal’

The challenges did not end there as the U.S. announced in mid-2020 that it would withdraw from the organization. “Waking up to that news, and then seeing it echo across every media outlet, was extraordinarily difficult, both personally and professionally,” she said. “Did we expect it? We had heard rhetoric building in January, February and March, but none of us believed it would escalate to a full withdrawal. As an international civil servant, you’re supposed to shed national identity. But I’m American; the U.S. is my country. It was painful on that level too.”

What made it all the more startling for Stern was that the U.S. had played a leading role in the founding of the WHO in 1948 and remained one of its strongest supporters for decades. “Even in the earliest weeks of the pandemic, collaboration with the U.S. was incredibly active,” she said. “Roughly two dozen American scientists from the CDC and other agencies were embedded at the WHO, many since 2019 during the difficult Ebola outbreak in the DRC.”

When the WHO convened its first COVID-19 emergency meeting on January 1, 2020, American experts were in attendance in Geneva and stayed through those early weeks until lockdown forced many to return home. One month later, 40 U.S. government scientists traveled to Geneva for a major scientific meeting and dozens more joined remotely. The goal of that meeting on February 12, 2020 was to set a coordinated R&D blueprint, ensuring vaccines, treatments, diagnostics and therapeutics were in development.

Political narratives override public health coverage

“Then the shift came,” Stern said. “The U.S. position became that China was responsible for the pandemic and the WHO was acting as China’s agent, a claim that was profoundly untrue. In reality, the WHO was consistently pushing and pressing China to share data and information as quickly as possible, as later documentation confirmed.”

What troubled Stern most was seeing the way so many reporters handled the story. “The journalists who covered the science of COVID—the non-pharmaceutical interventions, the vaccine development, the clinical questions—were rigorous, informed and generally solid. But then the general political reporters jumped in, and they shaped the dominant narrative.”

Instead of focusing on the science or the public-health response, their framing became: The U.S. government says WHO has failed because of its relationship with China. “That storyline took hold, and it quickly became the way WHO’s entire COVID response was portrayed,” Stern said. “And yet, behind the scenes, we were doing hundreds of things every day—thousands every month—to understand the virus, coordinate global action and support countries. None of that fit the political narrative, so most of it simply disappeared from coverage.”

Pulling key funding from the WHO

Stern acknowledged that the issue with the U.S. funding cuts to the WHO wasn’t the decision itself, which was its right. The real problem was the abruptness, the lack of transition or planning. “The U.S. simply stopped, suddenly. But where was the public conversation?” she said. “Why didn’t ordinary voters and taxpayers see what this meant and say, I care about children surviving past age five in Sub-Saharan Africa, or We should finally solve tuberculosis, because it’s solvable, or Leprosy should not exist in India anymore? Why wasn’t there outrage that the work Americans had funded for decades disappeared overnight?”

Was this a communications failure? A political failure? A societal one? she asked. “The truth is, it was systemic, a breakdown across many decades.”

Paths forward

Despite the ongoing cycles of disinformation and political scapegoating, Stern remains optimistic. “The Global Fund has its replenishment meeting on November 21^st and I think they’ll have a solid outcome, possibly even with some U.S. participation.”

Stern also finds inspiration in the Pandemic Agreement, a landmark international accord that was officially adopted by WHO’s member states last May. This encouraged a new wave of engagement and conversations on how to learn from the failures of COVID, including the lack of cooperation, the gaps in sharing information and resources, and breakdowns in multilateral coordination.

To the students at the event, Stern offered this message: “You’re young, you’re students and we need you. Don’t turn away from this work. This is exactly the moment to step in, not step back.” To public health communicators, she asked: “How do we make people care again?”