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Merged USAID: is it really a bunch of crazy leftists? / Trump Was Absolutely Right to Shut Down USAID

At the New York Times Christopher Flavelle discussed how the first two weeks of the new administration sealed the fate of USAID.
 
The Great Zaganza said:
It's cheaper than spending trillions on wars, like Republicans do.
If after Trump 1.0 you still think Republicans have any clue or desire to balance the budget, never mind reduce the debt, you should have your brain and examined.
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If anyone after the Regan theirs thinks that any Republican cares about fiscal responsibility they are ◊◊◊◊◊◊◊ lying or ◊◊◊◊◊◊◊ ◊◊◊◊◊◊◊◊
 
AOL cited The Atlantic newsletter: "Nearly 500 metric tons of emergency food—enough to feed about 1.5 million children for a week—are set to expire tomorrow, according to current and former government employees with direct knowledge of the rations. Within weeks, two of those sources told me, the food, meant for children in Afghanistan and Pakistan, will be ash. (The sources I spoke with for this story requested anonymity for fear of professional repercussions.). Sometime near the end of the Biden administration, USAID spent about $800,000 on the high-energy biscuits, one current and one former employee at the agency told me...federal workers have sent the new political leaders of USAID repeated requests to ship the biscuits while they were useful, according to the two USAID employees...Over the coming weeks, the food will be destroyed at a cost of $130,000 to American taxpayers (on top of the $800,000 used to purchase the biscuits), according to current and former federal aid workers I spoke with." The Atlantic magazine covered this story.
 
At Reason Aaron Brown published an article criticizing a Lancet study on how many lives had been saved and would have been saved by USAID. Some of the points make sense at first glance, but I am not in a position to evaluate the statistical aspects of the study or his critique. He wrote, "Programs like USAID have numerous consequences, both positive and negative, and it is impossible to accurately calculate or project their impact with any confidence. Pretending to have scientific confidence in a quantitatively dubious measure, such as lives saved, is irresponsible and leads to a loss of trust in science." It is unclear how Professor Brown thinks that USAID should be evaluated.
 
Chris_Halkides said:
At Reason Aaron Brown published an article criticizing a Lancet study on how many lives had been saved and would have been saved by USAID. Some of the points make sense at first glance, but I am not in a position to evaluate the statistical aspects of the study or his critique. He wrote, "Programs like USAID have numerous consequences, both positive and negative, and it is impossible to accurately calculate or project their impact with any confidence. Pretending to have scientific confidence in a quantitatively dubious measure, such as lives saved, is irresponsible and leads to a loss of trust in science." It is unclear how Professor Brown thinks that USAID should be evaluated.
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Aaron Brown should submit his analysis to the Lancet.

Of course, he'd have to be able to justify his assertions.
 
Chris_Halkides said:
At Reason Aaron Brown published an article criticizing a Lancet study on how many lives had been saved and would have been saved by USAID. Some of the points make sense at first glance, but I am not in a position to evaluate the statistical aspects of the study or his critique. He wrote, "Programs like USAID have numerous consequences, both positive and negative, and it is impossible to accurately calculate or project their impact with any confidence. Pretending to have scientific confidence in a quantitatively dubious measure, such as lives saved, is irresponsible and leads to a loss of trust in science." It is unclear how Professor Brown thinks that USAID should be evaluated.
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Given that he's wrinting for a publication whose core tenet is "giving to the poor* is the root of all evil", I think it's a matter of ideology trumping reality.

*Unless the poor is named Ayn Rand and wrote Atlas Shrugged. Then it's the greatest good.
 
it’s just a news site with a libertarian slant. so it’ll be a little wacky
 
At NPR Fatma Tanis examined claims of waste, fraud, and abuse at USAID, writing, "But several of the officials who spoke to NPR said the administration had made no effort to weed out fraud and abuse at the United States Agency for International Development..."We are all waiting for DOGE to provide information, both about money saved and about the fraud, waste and abuse that they say they found," said Jonathan Katz, who researches such topics as anti-corruption, democracy and international development at the Brookings Institution. Katz was a senior official at USAID under President Obama."
 
Chris_Halkides said:
At Reason Aaron Brown published an article criticizing a Lancet study on how many lives had been saved and would have been saved by USAID. Some of the points make sense at first glance, but I am not in a position to evaluate the statistical aspects of the study or his critique. He wrote, "Programs like USAID have numerous consequences, both positive and negative, and it is impossible to accurately calculate or project their impact with any confidence. Pretending to have scientific confidence in a quantitatively dubious measure, such as lives saved, is irresponsible and leads to a loss of trust in science." It is unclear how Professor Brown thinks that USAID should be evaluated.
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It's all about that late Austrian School methodological individualism. Other people's needs, the impact of policy on those needs, are imagined to be an inscrutable mystery, a dark continent that does not deserve to be explored. Das ist ein weites Land. So it makes more sense to act in self-interest, because at least you know with contrarian-defeating certainty what your own interests are (presumably).
 
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Chris_Halkides said:
At NPR Fatma Tanis examined claims of waste, fraud, and abuse at USAID, writing, "But several of the officials who spoke to NPR said the administration had made no effort to weed out fraud and abuse at the United States Agency for International Development..."We are all waiting for DOGE to provide information, both about money saved and about the fraud, waste and abuse that they say they found," said Jonathan Katz, who researches such topics as anti-corruption, democracy and international development at the Brookings Institution. Katz was a senior official at USAID under President Obama."
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Such innocence...
 
Chris_Halkides said:
At Inside Medicine Jeremy Faust wrote, "If the impact of these projects is not clear, a stunning new paper out this week in The Lancet sheds light on exactly how large that impact is. That study concludes that USAID funding saved nearly 92 million lives during the 21 years analyzed, including over 30 million children under age 5. The analysis also projects that if the Trump administration’s cuts to USAID are not reversed or otherwise recovered, 14 million preventable deaths—ones that the US was slated to otherwise save—will occur by 2030. (Note: the statistical confidence interval spans from 8 million to 19 million deaths. Regardless of where in that range the real number ends up falling, all of these figures are horrific.)"
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Examples of poor thinking,
In 2001, the United Nations reports, there were 52.43 million deaths, or 8.4 per 1,000 people. In 2002, the death rate fell slightly; if it hadn't, 370,000 additional people would have died.
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He makes the assumption that USAID (or equivalent) was not saving lives prior to 2001, he draws his line for lives saved starting at zero for 2001, but there could be (and probably were) lives saved in 2001 so the line has to be shifted down. once you shift the line down the numbers fit.

The least developed countries—the ones with the highest per capita USAID spending—actually saw an increase in mortality of 8 million during the study period, thanks to higher average death rates from 2001 to 2021.
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The very poorest countries have the highest population growth, therefore the totall number of deaths may increase, but age adjusted deaths per capita (the important figure) could fall. So an absolute increase in deaths could be compatible with a decrease in expected deaths.

In comments
What a shockingly bad article. One person/study gives a methodologically bad estimate of lives saves and you use that strawman to conclude that no lives were saved.

> Programs like USAID have numerous consequences, both positive and negative, and it is impossible to accurately calculate or project their impact with any confidence.

Because it's too hard for you to estimate the impacts of the program, you're just going to give up?

Thankfully, some actually responsible people have done some accurate research into parts of USAID. Looking just at PEPFAR, this report found that it saved between 7.5M and 30M lives, with a best guess of 19M, at a cost per life of $3600. It relies in part on a differences of differences methodology that's immune from the specific criticisms in this article.
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Of course for infectious diseases, particularly HIV there is no just the individual lives saved, but the future persons not infected.
 
At Science-based Medicine Dr. David Gorski discussed an executive order that covers NIH and NSF grants. The EO said in passing, "Federal grants have funded drag shows in Ecuador..." Dr. Gorski responded, "As for funding “drag shows in Ecuador,” it is true that a small USAID grant ($20,600) was awarded to Centro Ecuatoriano Norteamericano (CEN) in 2022 as part a public diplomacy program. Whatever the policy merits or lack thereof that you might perceive in such a grant, whose purpose was, according to the State Department, to “promote tolerance” and “provide new opportunities for LGBTQI+ Ecuadorians to express themselves freely and safely,” I can’t help but note the obvious overgeneralization (not to mention, a bit of a bait-and-switch). Basically, the administration is generalizing a tiny grant that was not a peer-reviewed science grant as representative of huge swaths of federal science grants. Moreover, USAID has been essentially disbanded, and this was a tiny grant. Again, even if you don’t think federal dollars should be spent on such programs, you must realize how deceptive the rationale for this EO is."

Dr. Gorski provided a link to the grant. A portion of the description read "FILM FESTIVAL TO PROMOTE DISCUSSION AND GREATER UNDERSTANDING OF DEIA CONCEPTS AND CURRENT CHALLENGES AMONG UNIVERSITY STUDENTS AND YOUNG PROFESSIONALS IN CUENCA, LOJA, AND ZAMORA IN ECUADOR. THE PROJECT INVOLVES ORGANIZING DOCUMENTARY FILM SCREENINGS ON VARIOUS SUBJECTS RELATED TO DEIA, FOLLOWED BY DISCUSSIONS AND WORKSHOPS LED BY TWO U.S. FILMMAKER ENVOYS." I apologize for the all-caps presentation, but that is how it appeared at this site. The Newsweek Fact Check article to which Dr. Gorski linked suggests to me that the organization also received other monies. It is odd that this particular grant came up in the rationale for an EO that was directed to cover science grants in the U.S.
 
Emma Batha of Thomson Reuters reported, "Millions of drugs used to treat debilitating and disfiguring tropical diseases risk going to waste after US aid cuts stalled treatment campaigns, leaving vital medication to expire in warehouses. Experts fear the funding crisis could sabotage hard-won progress in the global fight against conditions such as river blindness and intestinal worms that blight the world’s poorest...Before its termination, USAID worked with 26 countries, most in Africa, supporting the delivery of billions of drugs provided for free by major pharmaceutical companies. Every $1 invested by the United States leveraged $26 in donated medicines, according to a USAID factsheet."
 
Chris_Halkides said:
Emma Batha of Thomson Reuters reported, "Millions of drugs used to treat debilitating and disfiguring tropical diseases risk going to waste after US aid cuts stalled treatment campaigns, leaving vital medication to expire in warehouses. Experts fear the funding crisis could sabotage hard-won progress in the global fight against conditions such as river blindness and intestinal worms that blight the world’s poorest...Before its termination, USAID worked with 26 countries, most in Africa, supporting the delivery of billions of drugs provided for free by major pharmaceutical companies. Every $1 invested by the United States leveraged $26 in donated medicines, according to a USAID factsheet."
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There's your reason DOGE pulled foreign aid. It was going to brown people, in the country of "deepest darkest Africa".
 
From Thomson Reuters: "Solomon Zewdu, CEO of the END Fund, a philanthropic organisation focused on NTDs, warned the cuts could have consequences down the line if surveillance is neglected...“Diseases don’t understand borders,” Zewdu said."

I don't know much about disease surveillance, but I found this information from USAID helpful: "USAID’s Infectious Disease Detection and Surveillance (IDDS) project was a 6-year project in more than 20 countries in Africa and Asia where there are significant gaps in health systems’ ability to detect, track, and rapidly respond to infectious diseases and drug-resistant infections that pose a major threat to public health and global health security. The project ended in May 2024."
 
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Chris_Halkides said:
From Thomson Reuters: "Solomon Zewdu, CEO of the END Fund, a philanthropic organisation focused on NTDs, warned the cuts could have consequences down the line if surveillance is neglected...“Diseases don’t understand borders,” Zewdu said."

I don't know much about disease surveillance, but I found this information from USAID helpful: "USAID’s Infectious Disease Detection and Surveillance (IDDS) project was a 6-year project in more than 20 countries in Africa and Asia where there are significant gaps in health systems’ ability to detect, track, and rapidly respond to infectious diseases and drug-resistant infections that pose a major threat to public health and global health security. The project ended in May 2024."
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That's okay, I mean it's not like some new disease in a far flung part of the world could ever effect us...
 
The Hill reported on a "pocket recession" for about $4.9 billion of foreign aid. "The proposal targets funds previously allocated to the State Department and the U.S. Agency for International Development, which the administration dismantled earlier this year." AP reported, "
Secretary of State Marco Rubio posted on X that USAID is essentially being shuttered and congratulated White House budget director Russ Vought for managing the process. “USAID is officially in close out mode,” Rubio said. “Russ is now at the helm to oversee the closeout of an agency that long ago went off the rails.”...The funds in the pocket rescission package include $3.2 billion in development assistance grants, $520 million for the United Nations, $838 million for international peacekeeping operations and $322 million to encourage democratic values in other countries."
 
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