Sep 26, 2025 3:00 AM PT

Another Pandemic Is Inevitable. Trump Is Making It More Dangerous.

mong its many painful lessons, the COVID-19 pandemic taught us that America’s defenses against a devastating health crisis were far weaker than most had reason to expect. More than 1.2 million Americans lost their lives to COVID, the most of any country. It’s puzzling and frightening to watch the Trump Administration dismantle initiatives aimed at keeping us safe from another pandemic.

And let’s not kid ourselves; another pandemic is evolutionarily inevitable. We can’t say when it will strike or if it will be worse than COVID. (Deadly as it was, COVID proved to be far less fatal than others we’ve seen recently, like Ebola, Marburg, MERS and SARS.) But research has projected that there is about a 50 percent chance another COVID-like magnitude of a pandemic (>25 million global deaths) will hit us in the next 20 to 25 years.

These are not good odds, especially for something as life-and-death in scope as a pandemic. But, according to one expert analysis, U.S. funding for global health will decline by a staggering 67 percent this year alone, or more than $9 billion. …

In spite of this, The White House, in its funding request to Congress for Fiscal Year 2026, has called for the elimination of the Global Health Center, among other steep reductions in funding for essential U.S. global health efforts. This is on top of a decision to withdraw and stop funding from the World Health Organization, which also provides coordination and technical assistance for global health efforts.

All this is a part of a broader plan to reorganize federal public health agencies, which Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. ironically calls the “Make America Healthy Again” agenda.

Vaccines are, of course, the backbone of a strong health system. Vaccines are the most widely distributed health intervention, with the routine systems reaching about 90 percent of children in the world. Again, the U.S. has, for decades, been among the biggest contributors to global immunization programs—most notably, Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance, which supercharged a dramatic increase of essential vaccine coverage in the poorest countries over the last 25 years.

That has helped save tens of millions of lives, contributed to a reduction by half of mortality rates of children under five, put developing countries on a better economic trajectory, and substantially reduced the chances that infectious diseases emerge and spread. Gavi also maintains global stockpiles of cholera, Ebola, meningitis, and yellow fever vaccines, which are available to contain new outbreaks wherever they may occur.

So it was both bewildering and concerning that Secretary Kennedy announced in June that the U.S. will not make good on its previous $1.5 billion, five-year pledge to Gavi. While only providing 13% of Gavi’s core funding, the U.S. has provided global leadership, setting the stage for other countries to follow and participate in this soft power initiative. Unless other donors replace this funding, an estimated 75 million fewer children will be vaccinated, potentially resulting in 1.2 million preventable deaths.

https://time.com/7320256/vaccines-trump-rfk-jr-global-health-covid/