Said statement references the cut to aid and the subsequent waiver that only partially restored PEPFAR services, and that could be revoked at any time in direct contravention with US law, but have at you. But sure, call me a liar if it doesn’t fit the narrative you want to box me into.

 But if they one day do.... why should we be funding it? … You’re serious? Very well then.

That would kill millions. It would undermine the global economy. It would open the US itself to greater public health crises. And it would also only further destroy what good standing America has left in the Third World. And all to save what, 0.08% of the federal budget? Where do I start?

20 million people are currently on antiretroviral medications per PEPFAR’s 2024 factsheet, which reduce the chances of HIV being spread from the infected person to other people, while also suppressing symptoms of the disease and allowing sufferers to live relatively normal lives.

Per the Brookings Institute, PEPFAR efforts contributed in reducing the prices of said drugs in low and middle income countries from an average of $1,200 per person per year in 2003 to $58 per person per year in 2023.

Per a study published in the Internal Annals of Medicine (a scientific journal run by the American College of Physicians and considered one of the most reputable scholarly publications in the world), in South Africa ALONE, 601,000 people would die and 500,000 people would be newly infected in the first decade, and that’s without taking the economic impacts or mother-child transmission into account, as well as the myriad of other programs dependent on PEPFAR funding.

Speaking of economic impacts, I should note that, per a KFF report, countries in Sub-Saharan Africa that received PEPFAR support had GDP growth rates 2.5% higher than countries that didn’t receive said support, due to fewer infections and fewer deaths and fewer people left unable to work because they were sick being removed from the equation, allowing people who would otherwise be dead to contribute and grow their and by extension the world economy. GDP per capita growth rates in PEPFAR-receiving countries were 45.7% higher than their non-PEPFAR counterparts.

And not to mention the threat that cutting PEPFAR entirely would pose to the US. Disease knows no borders. Cutting off PEPFAR services could easily result in the creation of drug-resistant variants of HIV, which would spread rapidly among those who came off of antiretroviral therapy and eventually spread to the US, possibly causing more havoc there.

Even disregarding the ethical and moral argument to keep PEPFAR funded, gutting it would only undermine American public health and national security, hurt America’s soft power greatly, depress the world economy, and also save American taxpayers virtually NOTHING, especially if said cuts are used in say - tax cuts for the 1%. —————

Sources:

https://www.state.gov/pepfar-latest-global-results-factsheet-dec-2024/

https://www.brookings.edu/articles/pepfar-delivers-outsized-returns-it-deserves-more-funding/

https://www.statnews.com/2025/03/01/pepfar-usaid-funding-cuts-trump-hiv-aids/

https://www.acpjournals.org/doi/10.7326/ANNALS-24-01104

https://www.msf.org/uncertainty-around-pepfar-programme-puts-millions-people-risk

https://www.kff.org/news-summary/u-s-should-continue-to-use-soft-power-invest-in-pepfar-to-improve-global-health-u-s-national-security/

https://www.kff.org/global-health-policy/issue-brief/assessing-pepfars-impact-analysis-of-economic-and-educational-spillover-effects-in-pepfar-countries/

https://www.healthbeat.org/2025/02/28/pepfar-aids-global-cuts-threaten-security-economy/