- "In children who acquired H.I.V. at birth, the infection can progress very quickly to illness, with death occurring as early as eight to 12 weeks after birth — shorter than the 90-day pause on foreign aid."
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/02/05/health/trump-usaid-pepfar... ("Foreign Aid Freeze Leaves Millions Without H.I.V. Treatment")
It also makes the point that, under some reasonable assumptions, you could assume that any domestic program you could theoretically redirect the funding to would likely be ~100x less effective than PEPFAR, which is an abnormally effective aid program.
It'd be like if Microsoft donated free copies of Windows to a hospital and then one day was like "Actually we've been donating too much stuff, your licenses are invalid as of today, your computers will now not work." It would be similarly strange to ask why Microsoft's contribution is so critical to anything outside their own company, when it's because they made it that way on purpose, partially for PR purposes, partially from genuine altruism, and partially to tie Microsoft's well-being to the hospital's.
I say we stop so other countries can spin up their own programs and pay for it. I have zero interest in using TAX dollars to fund medical programs outside the US.
[1] https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/foreign-aid-given-per-cap...
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_development_aid_sovere...
Just the interest on the US debt is almost a trillion dollars a year now which is 3% of GDP and the debt is ~35 trillion. Deficit spending is higher than federal taxes on the paycheck, which means you're basically paying double of what your paycheck shows.
Meanwhile Norway's sovereign wealth fund has $1.75 trillion dollars.
where did you get that?
it seems like Ebola Zaire, Marburg, and sundry other diseases are saying "hold my beer".
If we're going to do this we should probably institute some kind of health screening during the immigration process at entry points.
A dozen of vaccines and a proof (from the doctors certified by the US officials) that you have no contagious diseases (including TB) is a prerequisite to get any US visa. The only way to bring TB to the US, I presume, is to jump over the fence at the border.
Turning it off without any planning like its the back up server for a social media company is irresponsible and will cause people to die.
I think the rest of the world will withdraw from trusting the US after this and other actions. A lot of trust in the world leadership positions the US takes are being torched by these vandals right now and while I hope for an amazing US comeback in 4 years it looks a lot more like China will step in as a stable partner for a lot of countries after an almost complete betrayal of western values.
That's such an apt phrase. It goes back to the time Rome was a great and prosperous civilization, and there was a barbarian tribe–"Vandals" is a proper name–who were incompatible with kind of high civilization, who rode into a weakened Rome and looted various treasures they liked. And torched the rest.
It's an apt language to talk about people who seemingly don't comprehend the value of the institutions America built up over a century, the deep soft power behind them; who see only fistfuls of cash that can be grabbed.
putin.
Countries have a mutually beneficial relationship with the US out of need(world's biggest economy and consumer market), out of fear(world's biggest military), and out o necessity (Russia and China being worse alternatives) not out of trust. Basically, Realpolitik. Trump didn't move the needle on that front at all despite the optics in the eyes of the plebs.
If by some hypothetical scenario, tomorrow the US would disappear from the world and its status as the leading world super-power be replaced by a country like Russia or China, then the other countries on the planet would kiss their ring, just as how in a herd/pack all the males succumb to the alpha male. It's nothing to do with trust, it's all to do with power and influence.
The USA currently has a problem where a large portion of the US population no longer trusts the USA. That population shifts depending on whichever group is in charge of the federal government
Maybe this is not the way to repair that trust, I don't know. But I think for a lot of people, "Stop sending tons of our tax money to other countries" is a step to repair some of that trust with the population
The next step would have to be "start re-investing that money back into America" but we'll see if that actually happens
Feature, not a bug.
Yes, bingo. On both sides, people have become extremely sick of seeing "billions of dollars sent to X" in the news knowing that we, American citizens, will never receive anything like that amount of aid
They're so rich that they're isolated from any negative fallout (and they'll try to benefit from them too).
USAID is a bogeyman for that "community"
If USAID and aid to places in much of Africa was our soft power, I'd expect to see a lot less pivoting to China and Russia in those places. On that note, perhaps the countries that decided to invite Wagner or enter the Chinese BRI can ask their new friends for some TB meds?
I had watched a loved one suffer from this disease. The pills were huge. Waiting too long to start treatment causes a lot of complications. These aren't well understood, given the massive TB funding deficits. Even when the disease is cleared from your lungs, it leaves plenty of things behind.
If you or somebody you know is coughing persistently for weeks, losing weight, has evening fevers, just get the quantiferon gold test. Be persistent with your doctor, just mention past TB exposure. Your insurance should cover it. Don't wait around months trying to look at every other avenue. It'll look very similar to aspergillosis on x-rays.
[1]https://www.cjonline.com/story/news/politics/government/2025...
It's similar to why a lot of people thought George W. Bush rolled invading Iraq into his plan to take down Al-Qaeda despite Iraq not apparently harboring them.
What about American taxpayers of the "maga" persuasion?
