The unspoken mission of USAID and the CDC is to deal with these issues "over there" before they get "here."
Think all these HIV drugs now on the market were tested on American or Europeans?
Why are so many people blind to the idea that the name and stated purpose of an organization can and many times do differ from the actual real-world outcomes that organization produces?
I don't remember this because it did not happen.
However, I do recall our own (Trump-run) CDC putting out ineffective testing materials, while the (admittedly Trump-supported) WHO made the testing resources the whole world, including the US, relied on in the first months of the pandemic.
There was a whole-of-government approach to silencing factually true statements about the pandemic because it either made officials look bad or Trump look good. There was a whole Supreme Court case around this that was sidestepped on grounds of standing, not on the facts of the case.
Anthony Fauci, a prominent NIH official who was the initial public face of the government's response to the pandemic, was revealed to have exhibited a significant lack of candor around the origins of Covid and his involvement in funding gain-of-function research. This was discovered by a House subcommittee formed by a Democratic majority and continued by a subsequent Republican majority.
> Anthony Fauci, a prominent NIH official who was the initial public face of the government's response to the pandemic, was revealed to have exhibited a significant lack of candor around the origins of Covid and his involvement in funding gain-of-function research. This was discovered by a House subcommittee formed by a Democratic majority and continued by a subsequent Republican majority.
These are very peculiar claims that I, despite very close following of factual news sources, have not seen.
What are your sources for these claims?
The article says they're looking for $25M or so. If any cases make it to the US, that much money will only cover a small number of patients. In 2014, $1M covered two patients. [1] Much better to spend the money on containment overseas than not spend it overseas and have (more) cases arrive here. It's also much better for the country where the outbreak is occuring. If said country could manage the response on its own, that would be great, but outside help in outbreaks is a good thing anyway --- there's valuable exchange of information between doctors and nurses from different areas in addition to filling the need for additional capacity for care.
[1] https://www.nbcnews.com/storyline/ebola-virus-outbreak/cost-...
> Perhaps the American taxpayer could be incentivized to continue financially supporting the DR Congo in other ways? Maybe they could apply to become a protectorate or somesuch. You can't have your sovereign cake and eat it, too.
We weren't asked about the abrupt change. I am sure that the average taxpayer supports maintaining lives overseas at minimal costs. She also probably wants pandemics not to infect her children on US shores.
> In other words: if a country cannot actually exist without being propped up by another, at some point it may be better for everyone to just break the illusion.
On a geopolitical sense, this is absurd. Just consider Poland: do they wish Ukraine didn't exist because of the amount of resources they expend on Ukraine's defense?
The article claims 57 cases and 35 deaths. Globally, Ebola killed 15k people over the past 50 years[0]. In the last big outbreak in the DR Congo, it infected less than 4k people in a country of roughly 100 million.
Perhaps I'm misunderstanding your sentence, but your way of phrasing ("a body of millions") seems to dramatically overstate the impact.
> We weren't asked about the abrupt change.
There was a hotly contested election with one side promising abrupt change and the other side promising a maintenance of the status quo. It's really not like they were hiding their intentions. Broadly speaking, the electorate wanted to take a wrecking ball to what they saw as Washington excess, whether that characterization is fair or not.
> Just consider Poland: do they wish Ukraine didn't exist because of the amount of resources they expend on Ukraine's defense?
Poland shares a border with Ukraine, who is being invaded by a nation that has also been a historical aggressor against Poland. I don't believe this is a good comparison to the US funding healthcare in the DR Congo.
You compared a sovereign nation to an apartment, sorry I was unclear.
> There was a hotly contested election with one side promising abrupt change and the other side promising a maintenance of the status quo.
There's good polling about this sort of thing - Americans don't want to cause the death of other people. You may construe the electioneering to mean otherwise, but I was not alluding to this.
https://www.pewresearch.org/global/2025/05/01/majorities-of-...
> Poland shares a border with Ukraine, who is being invaded by a nation that has also been a historical aggressor against Poland. I don't believe this is a good comparison to the US funding healthcare in the DR Congo.
I disagree, because allowing infectious disease to fester slowly allows the development of antibiotic resistance and magnification of problems that could otherwise be contained.
In a sense, we're all closer to infections in the developing world than we recognize - despite the US efforts to dismantle the system that has surveilled these infections up to now.
A sovereign nation in name only, who cannot adequately protect its people against disease without Uncle Sam's backstop.
> Americans don't want to cause the death of other people
Your concept of causation here is tortured. Americans are not spraying Ebola from airplanes. Can you equally say that you caused the death of a beggar who you passed by without sparing a dollar?
I can say that, having promised to deliver medication to someone, a capricious cut in medication supply will be causative in whatever change may result. And that is exactly the setting in which this poll was conducted.
First, what you propose may work only if happenings in other countries don't affect the US, which I very much doubt.
Second, in most of these countries, it is actually the drip-feed of supposed western "help" that props up corruption and prevents any real change. The "aid" is a form of control, not actual help.
If western nations wanted to actually help, they would support the Grand Inga dam project [1] to actually lift people out of poverty. Instead, they oppose it on environmental grounds, never mind that their industrialization was built on the back of massive pollution.
The rich wants more tax breaks so they can gobble up more money and own more assets at US citizens expense.
How’s that sound?
In other words: if a country cannot actually exist without being propped up by another, at some point it may be better for everyone to just break the illusion. Like someone complaining that they can't afford to live in a nice apartment in Brooklyn anymore because their trust fund got cut off; in the long run, it's better to base expectations around reality.