>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?
