5 ms·
Ebola outbreak in DR Congo rages, with 61% death rate and funding running dry
- beanjuiceII 1y agoso all these other countries could provide the funding they need, but wont?
- AlotOfReading 1y agoLeaving aside that USAID was hugely important to US soft power and the hopefully universal goal of preventing Ebola outbreaks, other people being shitty isn't an excuse to be shitty ourselves.
- sejje 1y agoSo giving them billions of dollars was shitty? Helping these folks should be something we want to do as humans, not as part of our political cycle, or something our government forces us to do, IMO. Has any critical commenter here contributed funds to this new ebola outbreak? Or do you just want to mandate that other people donate?
- AlotOfReading 1y agoThanks for asking. My non-tax medical aid dollars go to Project C.U.R.E. They haven't responded to this specific event yet because international ocean shipping isn't well suited to first response situations, but they'll eventually have supplies to help. How do you choose to help? [0] https://projectcure.org/ https://projectcure.org/
- paulcole 1y agoYes, that’s exactly what’s happening. It’s not right or wrong, it’s just the decisions we’ve made about the kind of world we choose to live in. Think about other problems like hunger or health care in the United States. These are problems we have created for ourselves! We could choose to fix them and instead choose not to.
- pfisch 1y agoSome problems are much easier to solve than others. The problems you are bringing up are far more intractable and far harder and more expensive to solve.
- paulcole 1y agoOK they’re harder but they’re also potentially more important and valuable to solve. They’re still solvable but we simply do not value solving them.
- mindslight 1y agoDomestic hunger is really not a hard problem to solve. Rice, beans, and vegetables cooked in bulk and handed out at every fire station.
- prmph 1y agoIndeed, most of the problems in the worlds are there because we don't actually want to fix them. There's more than enough resources to provide every single person a reasonable existence; We just don't think the homeless, for instance, should be freely helped to get housing. Nah, can't have that, how else can we point to "those" people as examples of the kind of life not conforming gets you? We'd rather millions go to bed hungry instead of not propping up national markets by destroying food and providing subsidies.
- blargthorwars 1y agoWe make it hard on ourselves: With spare change, we could house every homeless person in a tent in a temperate environment in a remote location. Instead, we house a tiny few in nice apartments in high COL cities.
- kerningije 1y agoThe whole point of civilization is wealth inequality
- 1y ago
- sejje 1y agoCan't the Congo itself fund a $23 million effort to save its own citizens?
- testdelacc1 1y agoNo, because they’re resource cursed. Not everyone has the luxury of a working government.
- perks_12 1y agoThey are also at war, they are fighting against the Rwanda-funded M23.
- smallerize 1y agoIt's not easy to replace a $25 billion global organisation in a few months.
- mint5 1y agoIf you saw an guy on the floor gasping for someone to help with his asthma inhaler while other people simply walked by, would you walk by thinking yeah I could help him but other people aren’t so tough cookies, I’m not either. Fill in any situation where someone is in need, one has the ability to help with little inconvenience, but one choose not to because other people aren’t helping.
- cindyllm 1y ago[dead]
- amelius 1y ago> In the past, the US Agency for International Development, USAID, has provided critical support to respond to such outbreaks. But, with funding cuts and a dismantling of the agency by the Trump administration, the US is notably absent, and health officials fear it will be difficult to compensate for the loss. ...
- idle_zealot 1y agoIt receives relatively little attention now, but in terms of sheer numbers the cuts to the USAID program have had and will continue to have the largest death toll of anything this administration does. I'm sure the economic suicide will have its victims, and who knows how many have died in detention facilities, but it would be damn-near impossible to match up the the loss of human life seen in poor countries without access to the basic supplies and medical care that USAID delivered.
- cyberjerkXX 1y agoThe US is not responsible for fixing every world issue. Just because they've helped in the past doesn't make them morally responsible for every current and future crisis.
- lanstin 1y agoNo but keeping Ebola from becoming a world wide problem is in the US interests and USAID was a very cheap way to advance that goal. We funded USAID out of decency (and to gain a reputation for decency, which is worth a lot of money) sure, but also to protect ourselves.
- cyberjerkXX 1y ago[flagged]
- bonsai_spool 1y ago> Sounds like a job for the WHO - maybe the UN can do it's job. Ah, the WHO that has recently lost money from its largest contributor, a contributor that unexpectedly stopped its contributions without explanation.
- oldpersonintx2 1y ago[dead]
- spookie 1y agoUnfortunately, the country has been under many conflicts, one after another. Doesn't help the situation at all.
- brainzap 1y agoin hindsight it would have probably cheaper to buy their government
- supportengineer 1y ago[flagged]
- mindslight 1y agoI voted conservative, too. Actually conservative, meaning the Democratic party - not tear-it-all-down hate-everything-about-America revanchist Republican. At least we've seemingly gotten an answer to the anthromorphic principle thought experiment of why we were (individually) born in this time - it's the most populous time in human history looking backwards and forwards. At this rate I doubt we'll be getting off this rock. That civilization-bootstrapping energy stored in easily-accessible oil deposits isn't coming back any time soon.
- hagbard_c 1y ago> Actually conservative, meaning the Democratic party Not in this universe they're not. Not conservative nor democratic or they'd have run Sanders as candidate instead of Clinton, they'd have had a primary these last elections instead of rigging things so that Biden's handlers could try to run the show again, they'd have another primary again when the game was up for where Biden's handlers were concerned instead of pushing forward Harris. They are no conservative by any stretch of the imagination and would most likely consider that label to be an insult. > At this rate I doubt we'll be getting off this rock. That civilization-bootstrapping energy stored in easily-accessible oil deposits isn't coming back any time soon There's plenty of fossil sources left and that's leaving aside the fact that these are but a first stage in 'getting off this planet'. The latest generation of rockets - Starship being the prime and most likely to become operation example - run on Methane which is fairly easy to generate out of CO₂ and H₂O given enough energy and at least H₂O is available in large quantities while CO₂ can be produced by many means. No, capturing it from the atmosphere will not be the way to go since no matter how much the media want you to believe CO₂ is overwhelming us it is still a trace element measured in the hundreds of parts per million. It is much easier to capture it from fermentation processes (breweries, bakeries etc), source it as a byproduct from Ammonia production, get it from natural wells or free it from CaCO₃ by heating it up - it decomposes to CaO and CO₂. Just let people like Musk (et al) work on this and before you know it we will be 'getting off this rock'.
- more_corn 1y agoEveryone keeps talking about “The Pandemic” what you fail to understand is that it was merely “A Pandemic”
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- fithisux 1y ago[flagged]
- smallerize 1y agohttps://academic.oup.com/bioscience/advance-article/doi/10.1093/biosci/biaf050/8116758 https://academic.oup.com/bioscience/advance-article/doi/10.1...
- mint5 1y agoYou’re surprised a virus with reservoirs in local wild animals has periodic outbreaks? And seem want to imply it’s some conspiracy or lie? Okay you do you.
- fithisux 1y agoThey said in the past the issue was solved. Solved means solved.
- timmytokyo 1y agoThere is no better tell than use of the anonymous "they".
- fithisux 1y agoAre you calling me a liar? https://www.nhsinform.scot/illnesses-and-conditions/infections-and-poisoning/ebola-virus-disease/#:~:text=There's%20still%20a%20small%20chance,travelling%20to%20Africa%20is%20minimal. https://www.nhsinform.scot/illnesses-and-conditions/infectio...
- mint5 1y agoYou source never says anything about being “solved”… If I had to guess, after the fact, after your posts you googled around hoping to find a page that would back up your earlier statements about it being solved - a misrepresentation that you’d mistakenly or rashly assumed out of convenience.
- perks_12 1y agoThe WHO has a budget of over $4 billion dollars; we are talking about $25 million here. Surely they could pay for this instead of paying a brigade of useless analysts to estimate amounts needed. It would be nice if the US provided the money, but I do not understand why it would be their responsibility in the first place. Germany, France, etc., paid only $2 million, they could afford more. anAnd I say that as a European myself. Europe has to finally up their game instead of throwing pocket change in the ring, when in fact the Americans did all the heavy lifting. Meanwhile, we act as the moral instance in all of this and now that the US isn't playing ball anymore the emperor stands naked.
- jstummbillig 1y ago> but I do not understand why it would be their responsibility in the first place The world is a fucking complex mess and it's all just state. All things are set up in a certain way at this point in time and interact. As a leader in this setup it's simply not sensible to point at a single thing and say "Weeeellll, this seems like it's not how it is for others — and I really don't like that!" and then just stop doing it, and use that as justification to disregard the total amount of additional suffering this course of action causes. If you do, you are at best unfit to have any power but possibly also just evil.
- perks_12 1y agononsense. it is time to dismantle the current state of affairs and to start thinking about better ways to approach things. Sure, we can keep all the things rolling as they are. Every once in a while something will flare up in Africa, we send money, we do the work, everything is back to normal a year later, we do it again. Or maybe we start to question if there is a better way to do things. I don't want to say Trump is doing everything right, but at least he tries. He got the Rwandan president and the Congolese at one table and told them to stop the bullshit. If Trump ends the war and gets Western countries into the DRC to do proper mining, the DRC will be one of the richest nations of all time, and they will finally have enough resources to educate their population on the dangers of fucking bush meat.
- chmod775 1y agoThe amount of money they're asking for is so laughably small, the fact that nobody has stepped up so far can only be explained with apathy. It's so small, lots of smaller cities could fit that in their budget without a second thought. The list of individuals to which that is an inconsequential amount of money is thousands strong. Chump change to prevent something that could develop into a global threat to health and trade? What a steal.