Elon's DOGE is responsible for over 100k deaths. Some died a horrible death with medical devices stuck in them because there was no one to remove them after all funding was instantly cut. One of the most inhumane and disgusting acts in history.
The study calculates that 91.8 million all-age deaths, including 30 million deaths of children under 5, were prevented by USAID funding in the period from 2001 to 2021, and projects that DOGE's cuts to USAID will result in 14 million additional all-age deaths, including 4.5 million deaths of children under 5, by 2030.
The Harvard articfle is just PR for a documentary that focuses on an individual (IE, an anecdote intended to be emotionally manipulative).
As for the article, this is modelling, not data (both the retrospective and the predictive). There is no direct causation being shown. You simply cannot make a claim like "X million people will die because USAID was terminated" based on this sort of evidence. It's not factual. It's not logical. Just emotionally driven claims intended to manipulate public opinion.
> As for the article, this is modelling, not data (both the retrospective and the predictive). There is no direct causation being shown. You simply cannot make a claim like "X million people will die because USAID was terminated" based on this sort of evidence. It's not factual. It's not logical. Just emotionally driven claims intended to manipulate public opinion.
How would one (ethically nor not) perform a randomised trial of this kind of intervention? Like, the Lancet definitely hop on far too many bandwagons for my taste, but it's almost certain that the withdrawal of USAID will cause ~millions of otherwise avoidable deaths.
And ultimately, it's the choice of the US government and people whether or not to fund these programmes. Personally, I think that they are worthwhile, but others may disagree.
But really, you're holding the evidence required here to a very high standard, one that many things you believe would probably not meet.
Thanks, this is more thoughtful than most of the replies I've seen.
I don't think anybody proposed or considered running a randomized trial.
I feel like the evidence standard has to be extremely high if you're claiming that tens of millions of people are going to die in the next few years with the goal of blocking a program from being defunded. Otherwise it's just emotional manipulation- "fight the change by making up numbers that sound bad".
> I feel like the evidence standard has to be extremely high if you're claiming that tens of millions of people are going to die in the next few years with the goal of blocking a program from being defunded.
I mean, this is basically the evidence standard that we use for flu/respiratory illness deaths, along with lots of other hard to measure interventions.
Personally, even if there were no deaths due to USAID being removed, it would still have been a strategically bad thing for the US government to do, in terms of soft power.
Additionally, the US are noted in development circles for circular aid, in that they gave a lot, but then required it all to be spent on US goods, so it was more of a subsidy for domestic producers.
I do agree that lots of people just jump on these numbers uncritically, because of prior beliefs about Musk/Trump/DOGE, but it would be very very surprising if there weren't lots of avoidable deaths due to the cutting off of aid. Like, the same thing could have been accomplished in a much better way by tapering off the aid as programmes expired.
IIRC, I personally read three different articles where journalists on the ground described specific deaths (with names) from the sudden and unexpected cutoff of aid. And there were studies from top-ranked universities numbering deaths in the hundreds of thousands, extending to millions over time. I do not have these links on hand, but I’m sure you can find them if you’re genuinely interested.
I've spent time looking and can't find anything reputable, so please share links. The studies you're referring to aren't based on evidence, they're estimates. If you're reading articles with specific names, that's journalism by anecdote not data.
I care about facts and data and I know how to read through propaganda. What DOGE did was terrible but I don't really see reliable evidence here for the scale and scope of what the media reported.
The problem here is that you are taking as fact something that a person with a vested interested in making Musk look bad has said. I'm just asking: where is the evidence supporting the claims for the deaths of this magnitude?
My point is that the most prominent tech CEO definitely killed people through reckless action, without apology or remorse. The actual number is unquestionably more than ten; almost certainly in the thousands; and, based (again) on research from people who study this kind of thing for a living, likely in the hundreds of thousands.
But even if he “only” killed 10 people (which we know for a fact based on reporting), that should be more than enough to make him persona non grata in polite society.
The actual numbers are more useful for the history books and eventual tribunals. Maybe that data can be gathered more definitively over time; I’m sure people are working on it as we speak.
Many meaningful change in government policy will cause some people to die. Are you going to tar every politician who makes a decision/law/policy that causes some people to die to be persona non grata?
I think much of people's response to this is driven by emotion, but that's the wrong approach to fighting the current administration and its enablers (organization, protest, daylighting actual problems, and understanding the psychology of the administration all go much further). Further, I think that posting bombastic, unrealistic claims about deaths is just misleading people who are already responding emotionally. Emotions will not get you anywhere in this environment.
Sure, what Elon and his DOGE buddies did was a travesty. But I believe if we're going to fight this, we can't just rest on arbitrary made-up numbers of foreign deaths as a reason to retain a funding vehicle.
Yeah but what exactly are we to do? If the bar for proof is so high, there isn't a way to meet it as these things are super complex. I'm all for being rational but at some point we need to accept something is stupid and stop trying to prove it so we can do something about it. What I observe up and down this thread is a demand for very specific evidence for something which is stupid on its face.
If your question is "what is the most rational process to follow to reduce the impact of the current administration on US aid funding around the world", then I think getting as many people to vote for democrats is probably the best approach.
It's unlikely anybody can actively prevent the executive wing of the government in the short term, especially with a president who violates all norms and ignores legal decisions.
As a bit of an aside, I would like to know how the US got into the situation where we were being depended upon to provide millions of dollars in aid to prevent millions of deaths- the engineer in me says "there is a root cause that should be solved"
I don't think this is hard to understand. The biggest employers in America have people who are on food stamps. When we deprive people of resources, what else do we expect?
Aid could have been tapered; advance warning could have been given. But Musk very publicly delighted in feeding USAID into the woodchipper, causing people to die as a direct result of his hasty actions. He simply did not give a fuck about the damage he caused.
This is not how changes to government policy are done. And yes, I’m livid and will eagerly vote anyone into office who will chase down this monster and force him (and his DOGE boys) to face justice. I am far from alone in this.
>Musk has said his critics “cannot cite a single name of someone who died” and “If there were, it would be worldwide headline news!” When confronted with the names – including those of children who died because of the cuts – Musk called a journalist “an utter piece of shit and a liar” and “utterly evil”. Musk has claimed, without evidence, that US tax dollars went to arming militants and “corrupt politicians”.
those are estimates, not data. I am asking about actual data. For example, mortality reports, piles of bodies, etc.
I understand feeling emotional about this, I really do. But the important bit is that if you make a big claim "millions of people died", you have to back that with actual evidence, not models.
> those are estimates, not data. I am asking about actual data. For example, mortality reports, piles of bodies, etc.
I think that this is an unrealistic ask, right now. Over the next 5-10 years enough time will have passed such that we can get more accurate numbers, but right now, all we have are estimates with wide confidence bounds (but narrower than they were last year).
Nope. And I hate that entire comic for poisoninh the very idea that asking for the evidence is wrong.
I'm operating in good faith asking people to show data. There is no reliable data supporting the claim that millions of people died because usaid was canceled. That's all.
All of these numbers are based on a single source, the Impact Counter dashboard made by a BU professor, which is full of methodological problems. It assumes 100% cessation of funds, for example, while in reality there was a freeze.
