As the U.S. formally exited from the World Health Organization last month, Trump administration officials misleadingly claimed that the WHO “pushed” or “promoted” lockdowns during the COVID-19 pandemic. The group did not explicitly recommend lockdowns, although it also did not advise countries not to implement them. It said it recognized that the measures might be needed in some cases.
More than six years after the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, federal health officials are spinning the facts about the WHO as part of their justification to leave the organization. The U.S. formally exited the WHO on Jan. 22, a year after giving notice to do so, much to the chagrin of many in public health.
The WHO “ignored rigorous science and promoted lockdowns,” Acting Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Director Jim O’Neill wrote on the day of the exit in an X post that also made claims about Taiwan.
The same day, National Institutes of Health Director Dr. Jay Bhattacharya similarly said in an interview on Fox News that the WHO “absolutely failed during the pandemic … pushing, still to this day … lockdown policies that plagued Americans for years.”
Those comments led to contentious exchanges with WHO officials who have taken issue with the statements.
“All untrue,” Maria Van Kerkhove, an infectious disease epidemiologist and the WHO’s technical lead for COVID-19, responded to O’Neill in a Jan. 24 post, adding, “we don’t ignore science and WHO never recommended lockdowns.”
The WHO also pushed back in a Jan. 24 statement, writing, “WHO recommended the use of masks, vaccines and physical distancing, but at no stage recommended mask mandates, vaccine mandates or lockdowns. We supported sovereign governments to make decisions they believed were in the best interests of their people, but the decisions were theirs.”
The dispute recalls a similar situation in October 2020 when President Donald Trump, then in his first term, incorrectly said that the WHO had “just admitted” that he was “right” about lockdowns. Trump had criticized lockdowns, saying they were “worse than the problem itself.” Trump was in office at the height of the pandemic when COVID-19 restrictions in the U.S. were the most stringent.
As we wrote then, the WHO’s position on lockdowns had always been more nuanced — the group neither recommended the measures nor advised against them, saying it recognized that lockdowns can harm society but are sometimes necessary.
The organization did at times praise China’s aggressive response, and supported countries in their decisions, which could be interpreted as an implicit endorsement of the measures. But it’s an oversimplification to say that the WHO “pushed” or “promoted” lockdowns. We did not find evidence that the WHO explicitly recommended them, consistent with the organization’s statements.
We reached out to the NIH to ask about Bhattacharya’s comments and to the CDC to ask about O’Neill’s, but did not receive a reply. The WHO pointed us to a Q&A post — last updated Dec. 31, 2020 — that we also previously referenced, which notes that so-called “lockdown” measures can work to slow viral transmission but can have “a profound negative impact,” especially for disadvantaged groups.
“WHO recognizes that at certain points, some countries have had no choice but to issue stay-at-home orders and other measures, to buy time,” the post continues, adding that “WHO is hopeful that countries will use targeted interventions where and when needed, based on the local situation.”
Similar language also appears in an April 2020 WHO document, which states there is an “urgent need” to transition away from lockdown measures, but also cautions that premature lifting of restrictions without careful planning is likely to lead to an uncontrolled surge in COVID-19 cases.
It’s worth noting that there is no unified definition of what “lockdowns” are. While they generally refer to what the WHO terms “large scale physical distancing measures and movement restrictions,” they varied greatly in scope and severity in different countries during the COVID-19 pandemic. The U.S. version — which at its most restrictive involved stay-at-home orders and school and business closures, implemented by states and local governments — was far lighter than measures imposed in China, for example.
In some parts of China, residents at times could not leave their cities, were not allowed to use their own cars and needed permission to leave their apartments. In the U.S., there was never a federal lockdown, although the Trump administration issued guidelines that told people to avoid large gatherings and encouraged school and nonessential business closures early in the pandemic.
“My administration is recommending that all Americans, including the young and healthy, work to engage in schooling from home when possible. Avoid gathering in groups of more than 10 people. Avoid discretionary travel. And avoid eating and drinking at bars, restaurants, and public food courts,” Trump said on March 16, 2020, when announcing the government’s “15 Days to Slow the Spread,” which was later extended. On March 23, 2020, Trump said that “America will again, and soon, be open for business — very soon.”
The word “lockdown” has sometimes erroneously been applied to any public health measure, even those that don’t limit social interactions.
Contentious Exchanges
In response to Van Kerkhove’s post about O’Neill, Bhattacharya pointed to some text of the WHO-China Joint Mission report in February 2020, and wrote, “That is just plain false. The WHO mission to China in 2020 lauded the Chinese lockdown as a success, in effect endorsing the model for the rest of the world.”
The text he cited stated that the measures employed in China — at their core, proactive surveillance, rapid diagnosis and case isolation and tracking and quarantine of close contacts — “are the only measures that are currently proven to interrupt or minimize transmission” of the coronavirus. “Given the damage that can be caused by uncontrolled, community-level transmission of this virus, such an approach is warranted to save lives and to gain the weeks and months needed for the testing of therapeutics and vaccine development,” the report added.
Van Kerkhove, however, replied: “What you’re reading here is that we acknowledged that governments had to take tough decisions to protect their populations, but lockdowns were never recommended, nor were they a policy recommendation by @WHO.”
Finishing the exchange, Bhattacharya wrote: “What I’m not reading here is a condemnation of lockdowns at a time where governments worldwide were seriously considering them. If you want the world to trust the WHO, take honest ownership of this failure.”
Bhattacharya has also objected to statements from the WHO’s leader, Director-General Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, who had responded to an X post from Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., saying that the HHS statement “contains inaccurate information” and that the WHO “never recommended lockdowns.”
“That is just deeply dishonest,” Bhattacharya wrote in a Jan. 24 X post. “If the WHO opposed lockdowns, where was the WHO condemnation of them in 2020 or 2021? Or of China’s lockdowns in 2022?”
A day later, Bhattacharya posted a thread with what he called “receipts” of evidence that the WHO is wrong, which included statements from the WHO about what countries should ideally do before lifting lockdown measures.
The disagreement between U.S. and WHO officials partly comes down to semantics. Bhattacharya is correct that the WHO mission praised China’s response — and that the group did not come out against lockdowns. But Van Kerkhove and the WHO have not claimed to have done so. Moreover, not opposing lockdowns is different from recommending them.
“WHO neither recommended nor categorically opposed lockdowns,” Van Kerkhove told us in an email responding to questions about the claims. “We recommended a comprehensive risk-based approach including surveillance, contact tracing, testing, quarantine (for those infected), isolation (for contacts), physical distancing, the use of masks/respirators, personal protective equipment for health workers, improved ventilation, vaccines, therapeutics and more. At the same time, we acknowledged that in some circumstances, countries felt they had no choice but to introduce lockdowns to prevent their health systems being overwhelmed resulting in more lives lost. We respected that choice, as it was their sovereign right, but we said that lockdowns should not be used as the primary or default strategy for controlling COVID-19, and highlighted their serious social and economic consequences.”
“We did say, repeatedly and clearly, that lockdowns came with risks and potential harms, and that they were not a sustainable solution,” she added.
She pointed to multiple examples of the WHO expressing this view or warning about the harms or potential harms of lockdown measures, including a speech the director-general gave in April 2020 that reminded nations that “there is a need to respect human rights and dignity” and that the “restrictive measures governments are implementing are already having a massive impact on livelihoods.”
“Lockdowns are a blunt instrument that have taken a heavy toll in many countries,” the WHO director-general similarly said in September 2020. “With the right mix of targeted and tailored measures, further national lockdowns can be avoided.”
Van Kerkhove also cited a Q&A video from the WHO that Van Kerkhove appeared in and was shared on social media in October 2020.
Bhattacharya cited the same video in his X thread, saying, “A WHO epidemiologist lauds lockdowns as a way to ‘stop’ covid outbreaks.”
Van Kerkhove said that was a “deliberate misinterpretation of what was said.” In the clip, speaking for the WHO, she said, “we haven’t recommended” lockdowns, adding that “we do recognize that some countries and some areas have had to use what is called so-called lockdown measures because they needed to buy themselves some time.”
“This clip cannot be interpreted as me ‘lauding’ lockdowns,” she said.
Other individuals on social media have highlighted statements from February 2020 by Dr. Bruce Aylward, a Canadian physician and epidemiologist who was then a senior adviser to the WHO director-general, that Bhattacharya reshared on X.
During the press conference for the WHO-China joint mission, Aylward emphasized that what China had done did appear to be working. “What China has demonstrated is, you have to do this,” he said at one point. “If you do it, you can save lives and prevent thousands of cases of what is a very difficult disease.”
Van Kerkhove said this was also a case of misinterpretation. “Dr Aylward spoke positively about China’s overall response to COVID-19, and recognized that other countries including Italy were now taking ‘extremely aggressive actions,’” she told us in an email. “Dr Aylward’s comment that ‘you have to do this’ was a reference to the overall ‘aggressive’ or ‘rigorous’ approach that was needed to stop transmission and save lives, not specifically to the role of lockdowns.”
Aylward “did not recommend that countries impose lockdowns,” she added, pointing to earlier comments of his that day, in which he said “it’s important that other countries think about” applying “not necessarily the full lockdowns … but that same rigorous approach.”
Lawrence Gostin, a global health law professor at Georgetown University, told us that it is “certainly true that WHO officials praised China’s COVID-19 [response], and that was irresponsible.”
But, he added, “we forget how frightening the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic were. We had no vaccines or treatments and the virus was spreading exponentially. In that context, a temporary lockdown was clearly justified to buy time for the development and deployment of vaccines. Lockdowns were also intended to protect overwhelmed hospitals and health workers. It is easy to blame WHO for its proactive response in the midst of a global crisis. But it’s wrong.”
He said Bhattacharya’s posts “lack any subtlety or context” and emphasized that the WHO “has no power to order lockdowns & it never did.”
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