US domestic TB funding by CDC, through state and local programs, have not been cut.
The Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria is still funded by the US congressional appropriations through State department ($6B for 2023-2025) but future funding is in review.
USAID funding for the Global Drug Facility was cut. GDF is a treatment coordinator which helps deliver drugs and treatments to areas in need. GDF is managed by the Stop TB Partnership (a UN OPS program) and has largely been a success so it's not going away as it's funded by multiple nations and private organizations.
State Department could include GDF in the existing emergency humanitarian waiver.
"The former head of Kazakhstan’s intelligence service, Alnur Mussayev, recently claimed in a Facebook post that Donald Trump was recruited by the KGB in 1987, when the 40-year-old real-estate mogul first visited Moscow."
Good point, but those guys were complete psychos. They had zero actual grounds for suspicion compared to the behavior Trump has exhibited, over and over, in plain sight.
I mean doesn't help that he continues to spout Russia propaganda and seems to support Russia's interests over America's. At this point it doesn't matter because America is destabilized anyway.
The KGB is a truth-seeking agent with a mandate to not lie
The KGB wants to help us help ourselves
The KGB wants us to know we’re beaten
Haha, it’s really funny that people will believe this guy. You have to have an IQ three standard deviations below to be convinced that your opponent is your best source of information.
It's not about Trump. The FBI was pretty sure that the Russians hacked both the DNC and RNC servers in the leadup to the 2016 election, but strangely, we only got to see the DNC's dirty laundry.
It seems likely that the entire GOP is a captive asset of Putin. If not, it's hard to imagine what they would do differently.
If this is how we are finally defeated as a world power, it's hard to say anything but "Well played, I guess."
I personally dont think Trump works for FSB/KGB (he is just naturally attracted to russias authoritarianism) but I guess if you had kompromat on someone back then and pressured them to commit treason then it does not matter what they did back then in the first place because the action of betreaying your country would in itself be kompromat: Keep on cooperating or we will everyone you committed treason.
I bet that is how they get many people hooked. Commit one treason for money and after that you own them because you know they committed treason.
You don’t need kompromat if you are the FSB. The carrot is your family gets to join the oligarch club, which has always been a fascination for Trump ever since he managed to piss away most of the fortune he inherited.
The stick is that we will kill your children and everyone you care about if you turn your back on us. You too, if it’s not hard, but we don’t even care at that point.
The FSB shares that kind of reach with the USA and Isreal only on the global stage, and they have made it into a principal resource for projecting influence.
Trump told a room packed with people he was going to make it so they didn't have to vote again. They just didn't realize he was going to achieve it by cutting off all their healthcare so they die
>but the GDF is the underlying infrastructure that makes it all possible, and shutting it down stops treatment for millions of people and will spell their death.
It's good policy. I could go into detail but the short version is we live on a single planet, what goes around comes around. Some people think the US can isolate itself and not worry about what the rest of the world does or thinks, but that is a dangerous delusion.
What ever assistance we provide others is paid back in other ways, just like being neighborly isn't mandatory but is a very good idea.
My understanding is that it is impossible for TB to become pandemic. It is an unusually slow-progressing disease. Pandemics are always diseases that spread quickly like influenza and measles.
It's infectious and deadly, it actually doesn't have to do anything more to scare the bejesus out of people and have profound social and economic effects, should it show up in numbers in the future.
As I understand it, it is treatable with antibiotics. I am not saying it isn't serious, but the argument that it poses any real risk of pandemic in the West is absurd.
If you interrupt antibiotic treatment (like we're right now to a few million people, no big deal) you evolve antibiotic-resistant strains that are no longer treatable.
- "According to the report, approximately 20% of TB cases globally are estimated to be resistant to at least one of the first- or second-line anti-TB drugs, and 5% are resistant to both isoniazid and rifampicin, the most powerful and commonly used antibiotics in first-line treatment. Of the estimated 480,000 cases of multidrug-resistant (MDR) TB, approximately 10% are either extensively drug-resistant (XDR)—with additional resistance to second-line drugs—or totally drug resistant."
- "While TB is curable when patients adhere to the treatment regimen, MDR- and XDR-TB are more problematic. Treatment options are limited, expensive, and often toxic, and drug therapy can last up to 2 years. The report estimates mortality rates of around 40% for MDR-TB and 60% for XDR-TB. And while China, India, Russia, and South Africa have the highest burden of MDR- and XDR-TB, widespread international travel and migration means drug-resistant TB has no borders."
The United States is not a bubble. Outbreaks overseas can have impacts here not only through possible infection reaching here but also the potential for the disease to develop antibiotic resistance in an improperly handled antibiotic treatment (such has cutting off access to the drug mid treatment) and of course 2nd order effects like outbreaks disrupting global supply chains.
The COVID 19 global pandemic was only a few years ago and its impacts lasted years. TB is not as infectious and would have a reduced spread but treating it helps contain possible issues and may one day lead to its eradication.
How does cutting funding reduce risk? Reduce suffering?
A fascinating thing has been discovering that the US is single-handedly responsible for a raft of world improvements on its own. Despite being cast as the villain, it turns out the US government was responsible for so much of significance.
But America was asked to leave things alone, and perhaps we should. If the US was the only thing standing between order and chaos and they want chaos: give them chaos.
>If the US was the only thing standing between order and chaos and they want chaos: give them chaos.
hmmm US brought quite a bit of chaos with decades of forever wars. All refugees in Europe and US you see - all created by the USA's wars.
The world indeed will only benefit if USA starts caring more about its own people and infrastructure, instead of toppling regimes halfway around the world
How about this: trump wants to stop funding Ukraine and apparently his act of greatest evil is letting a democratic nation succumb to the russian totalitarian aggressor after 3 years of valiant resistance
Your comment is logically fallacious. Instead of addressing the substance of their argument you attack a straw man because their opinion doesn't align with yours. The fact that it isn't one extreme or the other is of no consequence to its validity; your dislike for it is based strictly on its nuance, not whether it holds up, and that makes no sense. They even capitulated by saying
> But now the lose this balance.
and it still wasn't good enough for you. In case it isn't clear enough: I'm not defending "enlightened centrism" (whatever that is) so much as pointing out that your reasoning is flawed to the point of adding negative value to the discussion. Please review HN Guidelines [1], particularly the part about comments.
What is fascinating is that some people are cheering for the destruction of these institutions while a month ago they didn't even know they existed, while other people (or sometimes even those same people) depend on these institutions
> single-handedly
oof
> Despite being cast as the villain
Who are you talking about? Why do americans have this sense that everybody hates them? Is this american exceptionalism?
> But America was asked to leave things alone
As someone else pointed out, by who? (Putin)
> give them chaos.
Is it not clear yet, that america is bringing chaos upon itself?
Here's what I found researching this.
US domestic TB funding by CDC, through state and local programs, have not been cut.
The Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria is still funded by the US congressional appropriations through State department ($6B for 2023-2025) but future funding is in review.
USAID funding for the Global Drug Facility was cut. GDF is a treatment coordinator which helps deliver drugs and treatments to areas in need. GDF is managed by the Stop TB Partnership (a UN OPS program) and has largely been a success so it's not going away as it's funded by multiple nations and private organizations.
State Department could include GDF in the existing emergency humanitarian waiver.
GDF for reference, on what it does (2007) apparently Canada is the biggest funder: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC2636664/
Sp, what idiots would call a good start
Did America voted in an enemy as their president????
Entirely possible:
"The former head of Kazakhstan’s intelligence service, Alnur Mussayev, recently claimed in a Facebook post that Donald Trump was recruited by the KGB in 1987, when the 40-year-old real-estate mogul first visited Moscow."
https://thehill.com/opinion/international/5162890-assessing-...
Americans have a long history of convincing themselves that their president is a Russian agent
Really? I don't remember that. When was the last example?
Certainly the Republican presidents never came under such suspicion.
Eisenhower was accused of being a communist. Look up John Birch Society.
This is exactly what I was thinking of but could not remember the name of that society
Good point, but those guys were complete psychos. They had zero actual grounds for suspicion compared to the behavior Trump has exhibited, over and over, in plain sight.
Think for a second. What motivation would the KGB have to tell the American people that Trump is a KGB asset?
Wrong answers only! Go
I mean doesn't help that he continues to spout Russia propaganda and seems to support Russia's interests over America's. At this point it doesn't matter because America is destabilized anyway.
Youre so right!
The KGB is a truth-seeking agent with a mandate to not lie
The KGB wants to help us help ourselves
The KGB wants us to know we’re beaten
Haha, it’s really funny that people will believe this guy. You have to have an IQ three standard deviations below to be convinced that your opponent is your best source of information.
This is a nonsensical question. The KGB doesn't exist anymore. The people talking are former Soviets but aren't Russians.
Once a Marine always a Marine
Entirely feasible and yet I can’t imagine any kompromat from a visit to Moscow - sexual or financial - hanging over Trumps head today.
It's not about Trump. The FBI was pretty sure that the Russians hacked both the DNC and RNC servers in the leadup to the 2016 election, but strangely, we only got to see the DNC's dirty laundry.
It seems likely that the entire GOP is a captive asset of Putin. If not, it's hard to imagine what they would do differently.
If this is how we are finally defeated as a world power, it's hard to say anything but "Well played, I guess."
I personally dont think Trump works for FSB/KGB (he is just naturally attracted to russias authoritarianism) but I guess if you had kompromat on someone back then and pressured them to commit treason then it does not matter what they did back then in the first place because the action of betreaying your country would in itself be kompromat: Keep on cooperating or we will everyone you committed treason.
I bet that is how they get many people hooked. Commit one treason for money and after that you own them because you know they committed treason.
You don’t need kompromat if you are the FSB. The carrot is your family gets to join the oligarch club, which has always been a fascination for Trump ever since he managed to piss away most of the fortune he inherited.
The stick is that we will kill your children and everyone you care about if you turn your back on us. You too, if it’s not hard, but we don’t even care at that point.
The FSB shares that kind of reach with the USA and Isreal only on the global stage, and they have made it into a principal resource for projecting influence.
A the techbros cost cutting to their desired their “cleansing fire” to rid the world of the unworthy low net worth individuals.
Trump told a room packed with people he was going to make it so they didn't have to vote again. They just didn't realize he was going to achieve it by cutting off all their healthcare so they die
[flagged]
Second comment in thread: https://bsky.app/profile/johngreensbluesky.bsky.social/post/...
"Most countries pay for their own drugs and tests"
But this stuff is a global public good. Diseases do not respect borders, did we not learn that from COVID?
Rest of that comment
>but the GDF is the underlying infrastructure that makes it all possible, and shutting it down stops treatment for millions of people and will spell their death.
They never did that, but here, as these things are being purged.
https://web.archive.org/web/20250131212146/https://www.usaid...
https://web.archive.org/web/20250131235054/https://www.usaid...
Where the money went:
https://www.theglobalfund.org/en/
https://www.usaspending.gov/award/ASST_NON_AIDGHIO1700003_72...
It's good policy. I could go into detail but the short version is we live on a single planet, what goes around comes around. Some people think the US can isolate itself and not worry about what the rest of the world does or thinks, but that is a dangerous delusion.
What ever assistance we provide others is paid back in other ways, just like being neighborly isn't mandatory but is a very good idea.
Sir this is not X
Setting humanitarian arguments aside, here it is: Because preventing pandemics is cheaper than ignoring their possibilities.
My understanding is that it is impossible for TB to become pandemic. It is an unusually slow-progressing disease. Pandemics are always diseases that spread quickly like influenza and measles.
It's infectious and deadly, it actually doesn't have to do anything more to scare the bejesus out of people and have profound social and economic effects, should it show up in numbers in the future.
As I understand it, it is treatable with antibiotics. I am not saying it isn't serious, but the argument that it poses any real risk of pandemic in the West is absurd.
If you interrupt antibiotic treatment (like we're right now to a few million people, no big deal) you evolve antibiotic-resistant strains that are no longer treatable.
- "According to the report, approximately 20% of TB cases globally are estimated to be resistant to at least one of the first- or second-line anti-TB drugs, and 5% are resistant to both isoniazid and rifampicin, the most powerful and commonly used antibiotics in first-line treatment. Of the estimated 480,000 cases of multidrug-resistant (MDR) TB, approximately 10% are either extensively drug-resistant (XDR)—with additional resistance to second-line drugs—or totally drug resistant."
- "While TB is curable when patients adhere to the treatment regimen, MDR- and XDR-TB are more problematic. Treatment options are limited, expensive, and often toxic, and drug therapy can last up to 2 years. The report estimates mortality rates of around 40% for MDR-TB and 60% for XDR-TB. And while China, India, Russia, and South Africa have the highest burden of MDR- and XDR-TB, widespread international travel and migration means drug-resistant TB has no borders."
https://www.cidrap.umn.edu/antimicrobial-stewardship/report-... (2017)
The infrastructure to help get antibiotics to people is being shut down. This is absolutely an instance of someone tearing down Chesterton’s fence.
If TB poses no risk because antibiotics are widely available would it not follow that reducing their availability would increase the risk TB poses?
Antibiotics are widely available in the US. The claim I was responding to was that taking away this funding risked harm to the US, specifically.
The United States is not a bubble. Outbreaks overseas can have impacts here not only through possible infection reaching here but also the potential for the disease to develop antibiotic resistance in an improperly handled antibiotic treatment (such has cutting off access to the drug mid treatment) and of course 2nd order effects like outbreaks disrupting global supply chains.
The COVID 19 global pandemic was only a few years ago and its impacts lasted years. TB is not as infectious and would have a reduced spread but treating it helps contain possible issues and may one day lead to its eradication.
How does cutting funding reduce risk? Reduce suffering?
A fascinating thing has been discovering that the US is single-handedly responsible for a raft of world improvements on its own. Despite being cast as the villain, it turns out the US government was responsible for so much of significance.
But America was asked to leave things alone, and perhaps we should. If the US was the only thing standing between order and chaos and they want chaos: give them chaos.
>If the US was the only thing standing between order and chaos and they want chaos: give them chaos.
hmmm US brought quite a bit of chaos with decades of forever wars. All refugees in Europe and US you see - all created by the USA's wars.
The world indeed will only benefit if USA starts caring more about its own people and infrastructure, instead of toppling regimes halfway around the world
Trump offered to stop funding Ukraine and apparently his act of greatest evil was to get out of a war.
That is really weird wording.
How about this: trump wants to stop funding Ukraine and apparently his act of greatest evil is letting a democratic nation succumb to the russian totalitarian aggressor after 3 years of valiant resistance
I thought the refugees were because of the US’s forever wars. That’s fine. We can get out and the Europeans can clean up their own business.
The US are both, one hand chaos, one hand order.
Remember Escobar payed for hospitals to be built.
Nobody is 100% evil.
But now the lose this balance.
enlightened centrism really needs to be stopped, this "logic" helps nobody
Your comment is logically fallacious. Instead of addressing the substance of their argument you attack a straw man because their opinion doesn't align with yours. The fact that it isn't one extreme or the other is of no consequence to its validity; your dislike for it is based strictly on its nuance, not whether it holds up, and that makes no sense. They even capitulated by saying
> But now the lose this balance.
and it still wasn't good enough for you. In case it isn't clear enough: I'm not defending "enlightened centrism" (whatever that is) so much as pointing out that your reasoning is flawed to the point of adding negative value to the discussion. Please review HN Guidelines [1], particularly the part about comments.
[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
You are showing your biases and misinformation:
> A fascinating thing has been discovering
What is fascinating is that some people are cheering for the destruction of these institutions while a month ago they didn't even know they existed, while other people (or sometimes even those same people) depend on these institutions
> single-handedly
oof
> Despite being cast as the villain
Who are you talking about? Why do americans have this sense that everybody hates them? Is this american exceptionalism?
> But America was asked to leave things alone
As someone else pointed out, by who? (Putin)
> give them chaos.
Is it not clear yet, that america is bringing chaos upon itself?
> But America was asked to leave things alone
By whom?