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For context: Tuberculosis treatment requires strict, months-long medication adherence. Even a brief disruption means patients may not complete their courses, al

For context: Tuberculosis treatment requires strict, months-long medication adherence. Even a brief disruption means patients may not complete their courses, allowing drug-resistant TB to emerge. These strains are far harder and more expensive to treat, spreading across borders and undoing decades of progress.

perihelions 2y ago
The brief (?) interruption to PEPFAR (Bush's HIV/AIDS aid program) has major impacts too. One of the plainest ones is that infants with HIV can, if anti-retrovirals are paused, die more or less right away. - "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.html https://www.nytimes.com/2025/02/05/health/trump-usaid-pepfar... ("Foreign Aid Freeze Leaves Millions Without H.I.V. Treatment")
- mplanchard 2y ago
  This article by Scott Alexander (Money Saved By Canceling Programs Does Not Immediately Flow To The Best Possible Alternative) talks a fair bit about how effective this program is: https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/money-saved-by-canceling-programs https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/money-saved-by-canceling-pr... 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.
  - perihelions 2y ago
    Reasonable assumptions would not assume you to assuming the US' top medical bureaucrat being a conspiracy theorist who denies the existence of HIV (and asserts AIDS is environmental and that anti-retroviral drugs are dangerous toxins). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_F._Kennedy_Jr.#HIV/AIDS_denialism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_F._Kennedy_Jr.#HIV/AIDS... ("Robert F. Kennedy Jr.#HIV/AIDS denialism") https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Real_Anthony_Fauci https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Real_Anthony_Fauci https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2024/11/rfk-aids-hiv-hhs-donald-trump/ https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2024/11/rfk-aids-hiv-hh... https://www.nytimes.com/2025/02/13/opinion/kennedys-views-on-science-are-too-dangerous-for-us-to-accept.html https://www.nytimes.com/2025/02/13/opinion/kennedys-views-on...
    - mplanchard 2y ago
      Yes, given the new health secretary, it's likely to be much more than 100x worse, if the money is redirected to any sort of positive end at all.

perihelions 2y ago

The brief (?) interruption to PEPFAR (Bush's HIV/AIDS aid program) has major impacts too. One of the plainest ones is that infants with HIV can, if anti-retrovirals are paused, die more or less right away. - "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.html https://www.nytimes.com/2025/02/05/health/trump-usaid-pepfar... ("Foreign Aid Freeze Leaves Millions Without H.I.V. Treatment")

mplanchard 2y ago
This article by Scott Alexander (Money Saved By Canceling Programs Does Not Immediately Flow To The Best Possible Alternative) talks a fair bit about how effective this program is: https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/money-saved-by-canceling-programs https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/money-saved-by-canceling-pr... 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.
- perihelions 2y ago
  Reasonable assumptions would not assume you to assuming the US' top medical bureaucrat being a conspiracy theorist who denies the existence of HIV (and asserts AIDS is environmental and that anti-retroviral drugs are dangerous toxins). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_F._Kennedy_Jr.#HIV/AIDS_denialism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_F._Kennedy_Jr.#HIV/AIDS... ("Robert F. Kennedy Jr.#HIV/AIDS denialism") https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Real_Anthony_Fauci https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Real_Anthony_Fauci https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2024/11/rfk-aids-hiv-hhs-donald-trump/ https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2024/11/rfk-aids-hiv-hh... https://www.nytimes.com/2025/02/13/opinion/kennedys-views-on-science-are-too-dangerous-for-us-to-accept.html https://www.nytimes.com/2025/02/13/opinion/kennedys-views-on...
  - mplanchard 2y ago
    Yes, given the new health secretary, it's likely to be much more than 100x worse, if the money is redirected to any sort of positive end at all.