19 ms·
Current estimates are 500,000-1,000,000 directly from aid cuts https://www.cgdev.org/blog/update-lives-lost-usaid-cuts https://www.cgdev.org/blog/update-lives-l
by luke5441 8mo ago
Current estimates are 500,000-1,000,000 directly from aid cuts https://www.cgdev.org/blog/update-lives-lost-usaid-cuts https://www.cgdev.org/blog/update-lives-lost-usaid-cuts with 1.6 million deaths projected.
- htx80nerd 8mo agoFun fact : there are poor people in America who need help. Some of which served in the military, or they come from families which several people served in the military. Do these people not come first? Despite popular belief, it is not the job of the US Tax Payer to feed the impoverished world. How many billions have been sent to Africa? People need to make their own countries great instead of waiting for more Gibs from the USA.
- FireBeyond 8mo ago> Despite popular belief, it is not the job of the US Tax Payer to feed the impoverished world. This is an overly simplified perspective. Work at this scale requires impressive logistics and commitments that are haphazardly "rug-pulled" can have catastrophic consequences, regardless of whose "job" it is. When I was looking at being a bone marrow donor, they talk about this. The process for such donation is involved, including minor surgical procedures for the donor. But they talk about autonomy and consent, and one of the topics is this (paraphrasing): Do I have the right to change my mind about donation at any time? The answer: while you always maintain the legal right to withdraw consent, at a certain point in the process, the recipients existing bone marrow is destroyed in preparation for your donation. At that point, there may be considered a moral obligation to continue the donation, as without your donation, the recipient will die, due to the destruction in preparation. > How many billions have been sent to Africa? Speaking for myself, I'd rather continue sending billions to Africa than contributing ~1.5% of Israel's GDP in foreign assistance to it.
- rvnx 8mo agoIf you are curious, the number #1 beneficiary of USAID is Ukraine, by far, and just behind #2 is Israel. Sounds more like foreign influence than actual survival help. Maybe USAID even funded wars, and caused more death and chaos, who knows. Difficult to predict what's next. Perhaps it will be good because countries will adapt and shine, instead of having local dictators surviving on these aids, etc. Also, there is a thing about people depending on you: I am feeding birds during winter, so at some point they depend on my food. Should have I had started feeding them at all or not ? If I didn't feed them, technically less birds would have died because they would never had a chance to live...
- cassepipe 8mo agoExcept Israel is an economically sound and undamaged country who has the upper hand against its enemies and Ukraine has been invaded and is the underdog of in this war ? It doesn't look that weird to me that humanitarian assistance would go to people who need it the most ? Do Israelis currently need heaters not to die from the cold after their energy system has been destroyed ? It's as if helping populations in need would buy you goodwill and popularity. Crazy to thing about it. I don't see how program trying to contain the spread of AIDS or preventing people to die from the cold is "funding" war. Not sure what you are on about. People will not adapt and shine, they will die or be more miserable, or revolt and probably be crushed. Civil war is always an option too. But your bird comment tells me you just don't care. You should have started with that.
- rvnx 8mo agoThe comments above mine were blaming USAID saying that it caused more damage because it existed and made people became dependent on it, and (in their logic) that it would have been better if it did not exist. If you look above you can see the whole concept “people die because of USAID”. It’s not my concept. I am showing with the bird analogy how this is absurd. That you always have the choice to feed the birds or not. At the end, it’s still a “damned if you do, damned if you don’t” type of dilemma, like all important political interactions. Nobody knows if the long-term impact will be positive or negative. It can push countries to take care of their population, to have new coalitions of countries (what if China double-down and offer more aid ?), etc. Pretty much unknown. I hope it will eventually work out for the innocents who are victims of politicians who are in comfy places.
- breakyerself 8mo agoYou know Republicans keep cutting services to veterans right? While democrats pretty much always vote in favor of benefits for vets. You choices aren't to either fund vets or fund aid. Your choices are to cut both or save both and I have a feeling you voted to cut both.
- mrguyorama 8mo ago> Do these people not come first? Not to republicans who have repeatedly voted down measures to take care of people getting straight up cancer from abysmal practices during the middle east wars that they started. Those same republicans also voted down support for the aid workers of 9/11 dealing with absurd health issues from all the dust. Literal heros and innocent victims, but republicans don't want to spend pennies on them.
- throwawayqqq11 8mo agoI hope such egotistical zero sum thinking leads to the economic isolation of the US. 4chan Fun fact: You and only can make america great again, amirite. Who needs steady deficit funding when you have freedom.
- Ylpertnodi 8mo ago> it is not the job of the US Tax Payer to feed the impoverished world. Other countries would like to contribute (more), but the people that represent us taxpayers want to keep all the inluencing for your good selves.
- cassepipe 8mo agoSure, let's send them malaria nets, food engineered for being able to eat without dying after being starved and free condoms, why not ?
- danny_codes 8mo agoWe don’t (didn’t) do it because it’s our job, we do (did) it because it’s the right thing to do. I’m surprised that preventing famine and malnutrition is controversial
- krapp 8mo ago>We don’t (didn’t) do it because it’s our job, we do (did) it because it’s the right thing to do. We didn't do it because it's the right thing to do, we did it for soft power, to spread our political and cultural influence and have leverage against those governments to serve our interests. Nations are not moral actors.
- danny_codes 8mo agoEh, every action has multiple motivating factors. You can be cynical and cherry-pick the less savory ones. But altruism motivates lots of people too.
- _DeadFred_ 8mo agoWhat help for these Americans did the Republicans put forward and approve along with these cuts? All I saw was a cut to the affordability of healthcare for those people. Did I miss some help that is coming that they didn't have before the USAID cuts?
- UncleMeat 8mo agoGreat news. Trump and DOGE cut programs for domestic poor too!
- BurningFrog 8mo agoFrom that URL: our estimates of “lives saved per dollar” from US aid are, at best, ballpark estimates I can't help being very suspicious of up to a million dead without identifying a single dead individual, or country or even continent where these mass deaths are supposed to have occurred.
- breakyerself 8mo agoIndividual stories spotlighting lives lost in the wake of these cuts aren't hard to find. Do you want me to Google that for you?
- zzrrt 8mo ago“the total lives at risk from aid cuts to 1.6 million lives lost per year” It’s a projection, a risk, and a rate, not a claim it has already happened to specific people.
- Timon3 8mo agoAlso from that URL (with links): > There is on-the-ground evidence of resulting impacts: Rising malnutrition mortality in northern Nigeria, Somalia, and in the Rohingya refugee camps on the Myanmar border and rising food insecurity in northeast Kenya, in part linked to the global collapse of therapeutic food supply chains. Spiking malaria deaths in northern Cameroon, again linked to breakdown in the global supply of antimalarials, and a risk of reversal in Lesotho’s fight against HIV, part of a broader health crisis across Africa. "Spiking malaria deaths in northern Cameroon" links to an article[0] which states: > BOGO, Cameroon, Oct 2 (Reuters) - Nine-month-old baby Mohamat burned with fever for three days before his family took him to the closest health centre in northern Cameroon, but it was too late. He died of malaria that day. Mohamat's death was part of a spike this year in malaria fatalities that local health officials attribute to foreign aid cuts by the United States. Before the cuts, Mohamat might have been diagnosed earlier by one of more than 2,000 U.S.-funded community health workers who would travel over rough dirt roads to reach the region's remotest villages. And at the health centre, he might have been treated with injectable artesunate, a life-saving drug for severe malaria paid for by U.S. funds that is now in short supply. But the centre had none to give out. So the URL very directly identifies a dead individual, a country and a continent, while also mentioning other cases that we hopefully all can agree will also directly lead to deaths. Do you take issue with this example? Or why are you stating that they're not "identifying a single dead individual, or country or even continent where these mass deaths are supposed to have occurred"? [0]: https://www.reuters.com/business/healthcare-pharmaceuticals/babies-deaths-cameroon-show-how-us-aid-cuts-curtail-malaria-fight-2025-10-02/ https://www.reuters.com/business/healthcare-pharmaceuticals/...
- ta9000 8mo agoUS AID was always about soft power. No reason Europe or China can’t step up and fill that demand.
- breakyerself 8mo agoSure, but while the world waits for another super power to step up lives are being lost. The US could have announced a phase down with a hard pressure campaign to get the other countries to take over with no loss of life. Instead these are just numbers in a statistic and opportunities for leverage in geopolitics instead of real lives with as much depth and meaning as your own.
- ta9000 8mo ago> Instead these are just numbers in a statistic and opportunities for leverage in geopolitics instead of real lives with as much depth and meaning as your own. I didn’t vote for this, it’s not about me, I have no control over this. I live in California, we never voted for Trump. Please don’t lecture me about how I feel.
- throwawayqqq11 8mo agoSo softpower kept all these peole alive? Ofc this is overly simplistic. There is hard power enabling soft power and there are alturistic extreme radical leftists actively seeking out and staffing such programs.
- rurp 8mo agoSo did the US reach an agreement with them first in order to avoid thousands of easily preventable deaths?
- slaw 8mo agoMore lives would be saved if usaid never existed.