Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Doge cuts to USAid blamed for 300k deaths – most of them children

thetimes.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

71–77 of 77 posts

Re: Doge cuts to USAid blamed for 300k deaths – most of them children

#71

Post by const_cast »

cadamsdotcom wrote: post #7

First to get this out of the way, I do not support the destruction of USAID and I definitely do not support the death of 300,000 people. This study brings to light a hidden problem of countries and individuals dependent on foreign aid. There should’ve been plans in place to reduce foreign aid dependency over time. Yes provide aid as needed & appropriate, but work out what it’ll take for the country to not need it and…

USAID put a lot of money into treatment of infectious diseases like Tuberculosis and HIV. This is directly beneficial to us, the US. We are a globalized world, and as we have realized from Covid, it's simply not enough to prevent infectious diseases in your country.

We're already seeing more incidents of Tuberculosis in the US. As a reminder to everyone, Tuberculosis requires 6+ months of antibiotics to treat. It can cause brain lesions.

Re: Doge cuts to USAid blamed for 300k deaths – most of them children

#72

Post by const_cast »

sunshine-o wrote: post #39

Something I have been wondering for a few years now before the whole DOGE, USAID thing. When the war in Ukraine started I heard Africa was relying on imports for food up to 85%. There are no word to describe how horrifying this is. To this day I still cannot believe it. 50% would sound intolerable to me. My question is: do we have reliable data on this ? flow of food to and within Africa? Also, if this is true, how c…

Africa is effectively still colonized by the west, particularly the US.

I don't think people conceptualize just how many resources Africa as a continent has and how willing they are to provide those resources to the West at an extreme discount.

The soft imperialism employed in Africa is a major piece of why the West is wealthy. It's not like we're giving food to destabilized and resource-rich countries out of the goodness of our heart.

Re: Doge cuts to USAid blamed for 300k deaths – most of them children

#73

Post by jhp123 »

constantcrying wrote: post #32
encom wrote: post #8

>The numbers are not recorded deaths, but rather predictions. “They’re modelled numbers and I recognise the limitations that that comes with,” she said. “We don’t have routine data sets that we can measure someone as ‘killed by the US lack of funding’.” Why are journos so dishonest?

>Why are journos so dishonest? No. The whole complex is to blame here, the scientists didn't do some rigorous open ended work. All of the scientists of course already believed that foreign aid is effective and beneficial (it is generally neither, especially not in the way it is actually practiced, where you dump random things into some poor place of the world and then leave) and are now gathering evidence to support…

> Given the enormous amounts of resources the west has poured into the poorest places on earth, when do we see the positive results?

The impact of aid programs is well studied. Here is one of hundreds or thousands of studies showing a measurable positive impact in terms of lives saved: https://www.kff.org/global-health-policy/issue-brief/assessi...

Re: Doge cuts to USAid blamed for 300k deaths – most of them children

#74

Post by IlIlIl »

encom wrote: post #8

>The numbers are not recorded deaths, but rather predictions. “They’re modelled numbers and I recognise the limitations that that comes with,” she said. “We don’t have routine data sets that we can measure someone as ‘killed by the US lack of funding’.” Why are journos so dishonest?

[flagged]

Re: Doge cuts to USAid blamed for 300k deaths – most of them children

#75

Post by Jensson »

maxerickson wrote: post #62
siilats wrote: post #61

You have to understand that Boston University is not a real school. Even the article says “ She readily recognises the shortcomings of her modelling. The numbers are not recorded deaths, but rather predictions. “They’re modelled numbers and I recognise the limitations that that comes with,” she said. “We don’t have routine data sets that we can measure someone as ‘killed by the US lack of funding’.”. Doge Cuts are ne…

Doge Cuts are necessary so the USA doesnt default on it’s debt This is more or less delusional. The US won't default on any debt (worst case, money printer go brrrr). The cuts so far amount to fuckall, even across many years. And then the proposed budgets increases deficits far beyond any savings Doge actually managed to find (if their cuts were even actually more effective than the inspectors general that were termi…

> worst case, money printer go brrrr

USA already are doing that, and have been for a long time, so "worst case" is already here. What do you think happens when things gets even worse than now?

Re: Doge cuts to USAid blamed for 300k deaths – most of them children

#76

Post by constantcrying »

jhp123 wrote: post #73
constantcrying wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Why are journos so dishonest? No. The whole complex is to blame here, the scientists didn't do some rigorous open ended work. All of the scientists of course already believed that foreign aid is effective and beneficial (it is generally neither, especially not in the way it is actually practiced, where you dump random things into some poor place of the world and then leave) and are now gathering evidence to support…

> Given the enormous amounts of resources the west has poured into the poorest places on earth, when do we see the positive results? The impact of aid programs is well studied. Here is one of hundreds or thousands of studies showing a measurable positive impact in terms of lives saved: https://www.kff.org/global-health-policy/issue-brief/assessi...

There is one really great way to measure if helping someone works. If foreign aid would work, then we would see it declining over time, as the recipient have used their aid to solve their problems, the exact opposite is the case. Foreign aid does not solve any problems, in fact it allows countries to not solve their problems and instead create new problems, which then also need to be addressed by foreign aid.

Re: Doge cuts to USAid blamed for 300k deaths – most of them children

#77

Post by jhp123 »

constantcrying wrote: post #76
jhp123 wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Given the enormous amounts of resources the west has poured into the poorest places on earth, when do we see the positive results? The impact of aid programs is well studied. Here is one of hundreds or thousands of studies showing a measurable positive impact in terms of lives saved: https://www.kff.org/global-health-policy/issue-brief/assessi...

There is one really great way to measure if helping someone works. If foreign aid would work, then we would see it declining over time, as the recipient have used their aid to solve their problems, the exact opposite is the case. Foreign aid does not solve any problems, in fact it allows countries to not solve their problems and instead create new problems, which then also need to be addressed by foreign aid.

PEPFAR, discussed in the link I posted, is aimed at the HIV epidemic. The HIV epidemic is in fact being solved by the approach of international cooperation and aid: transmission rates are already down by 50% from their peak in the late 90s.

The supply of foreign aid is usually not determined by need but by willingness of the donor countries. So when foreign aid makes progress against one disease or crisis, the money is redirected to the next most pressing issue. This doesn't mean it is useless or is not solving problems.

It is true as a philosophical point that sometimes, an attempt to solve a problem backfires and even worsens the problem. But it is also true that an attempt to solve a problem sometimes solves the problem. You've offered no evidence that foreign aid is ineffective or backfires in any way, just a handwaving story, against the hard quantitative evidence I linked in my comment above.

Post reply on HN