CDC to cut by 80 percent efforts to prevent global disease outbreak (2018)

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/to-your-health/wp/2018/02/01/cdc-to-cut-by-80-percent-efforts-to-prevent-global-disease-outbreak/

by uptown • 6 years ago

97 15 6 years ago

washingtonpost.com

kitsuac3• 6 years ago

Why is the US apparently responsibile for this financially in the first place? For the future, will other countries join financially to up our global defenses against future outbreaks?

It sounds like the US took up a global cause on its own and when the clock ran out they didn't renew because that emergency had subsided.

Is this what was being pinned as Trump's "fault" in recent press and social media?

hedora• 6 years ago

He did a few things to eliminate the pandemic response team in 2018. This was one of the things that happened:

https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/trump-fire-pandemic-team/

The US used to pay for this because the downsides of not doing it are higher than the cost. Also, initiatives like these increase the US’s political and economic power overseas.

wideasleep1• 6 years ago

"Trump’s budgets have proposed cuts to public health, only to be overruled by Congress, where there’s strong bipartisan support for agencies such as the CDC and NIH. Instead, financing has [bold]increased[/bold].

Indeed, the money that government disease detectives first tapped to fight the latest outbreak was a congressional fund created for health emergencies.

Some public health experts say a bigger concern than White House budgets is the steady erosion of a CDC grant program for state and local public health emergency preparedness — the front lines in detecting and battling new disease. But that decline was set in motion by a congressional budget measure that predates Trump." https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/trump-cut-cdc-budget/ The blame game is beyond getting old...it's moldy.

redisman2• 6 years ago

Why is it so hard to think longer term? What's good for the world is often great for the United States. Catching and quarantining this in time would have saved us from lots of deaths and a almost certain recession coming up this year.

overeater• 6 years ago

While this may be true, and perhaps even for the dollar the United States benefits more than the cost (while the rest of the world gets a bit of a free ride). But as a taxpayer, I'd rather the US spend that dollar elsewhere, even if the highest ROI is in spending on world pandemic prevention.

That's to prevent the current situation where in game theory terms, we're being the sucker and so it's in everyone else's best interest to leech. We need to reach a new nash equilibrium where everyone is contributing together (which is eventually more optimal for everyone involved, despite the short term hit).

RcouF1uZ4gsC• 6 years ago

Countries where the CDC is planning to scale back include some of the world’s hot spots for emerging infectious disease, such as China, Pakistan, Haiti, Rwanda and Congo.

Why was the United States subsidizing China which is the world’s second largest economy and has a military budget of $228 Billion making it the second largest military spender ( https://www.worldatlas.com/articles/countries-with-the-bigge... )

tlb• 6 years ago

To get a seat at the table for policy decisions. For example, we want them to stop sick people flying to the US. Paying for part of an operation is a common way to have some influence. Also, some deals require them to spend a fraction of it on US suppliers.

peter303• 6 years ago

The survival of the current US administration is at risk. Especially from anti-science policies like this health one and more abstract ones like climate change.

I say "Good riddance!". We can only hope this happens in time to save more lives.

CDC to cut by 80 percent efforts to prevent global disease outbreak (2018)

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