This will be an intense loss of resources for vaccine development going forward. Granted, scientists tend not to care about politics and share info on their own terms, for science, here’s hoping anyway should something on par with or worse than COVID comes up.

The yearly flu shot, for example, is a world collaboration.

Think of it this way. Flu is forever mutating into new flu. If two flus meet in the night, there’s a high probability a third flu will be born. Pig flu can hook up with human flu. Human flu can hook up with chicken flu. And so it goes, an endless cycle of new flus, some better adapted to some species than others, until it just adapts.

So scientists collaborate every year to develop a flu vaccine that contain the top, say, 3 or so strains they predict will hit globally, and that mix is your flu vaccine, new and different every year. Most of the time, they get it right. Some years, a new bad player pops up and we have H1N1 or H5N1 making news.

I still don’t understand what Trump thinks he’s getting out of getting out of WHO.