Covid politicized public health. Now, the US might give up on saving millions of lives.
Two decades ago, the United States led the establishment of a new global public health order that began with the fight against a devastating HIV epidemic in Africa. The initiative’s success solidified America’s role as the world’s biggest funder of global health programs and the most influential actor in coordinating global efforts to combat infectious diseases. Though the American-led push to fight AIDS does not draw much domestic attention, it is perhaps the single-most impactful US government program ever, saving 25 million lives over the past 20 years.
Global health is necessarily an exercise in long-term thinking. Investments can take decades to pay off. The Covid-19 pandemic infused a fresh urgency into these efforts — but it also politicized public health to a degree not seen in decades. Now, the global health community is trying to forge a new consensus while facing novel obstacles to international cooperation.
2024 will be a pivotal year for that effort, one in which the future of international efforts to address global health threats and improve medical care in the developing world will be decided.
Amerocentric article is Amerocentric.
If anything, as a US citizen, it seems like my country doesn’t give a fuck about public health, and maybe we should bow out and let someone else take the lead.
Our CDC changed COVID return to work guidelines not because of new information on the disease but because of business pressure to get people back to work.
We are already back to low-wage earners like retail employees going to work sick and spreading disease.
This article seems to assume only the US is capable of leading worldwide public health and I could not disagree more. The morons leading my country need to be kept the fuck away from it.
Seriously. The US has retreated from public health IN THE US. You don’t want us guiding international measures. Kicking Trump out just replaced the guy who was actively promoting COVID with someone that just saw it as a political and economic inconvenience to be swept under the rug. We have either the highest or one of the highest COVID death rate among rich nations. We’re objectively awful at public health.
America has removed Trump from office, but not the Trumpers from government. In much the same way Trump couldn’t do all he wanted due to the non-Trumpers in government.
The only Trumpers were appointed, and maybe in places like border control. If any Trumpers remain in health related positions, it’s because Biden decided to keep them. He’s fully able to choose who leads his departments, and for public health he chose people who have been relentlessly pushing to just go back to normal regardless of what the data indicates.
Oh come on, the US is only bad at public health when it becomes “political”, like COVID, or HIV, or providing lower income workers with healthcare. Everything else is fine!
The US retreated from global health leadership in 2016, along with most other global leadership. It is no small part of the reason why Covid developed as it did.
Bush’s PEPFAR is the one good thing he did. But let’s not pretend that somehow made us leaders in public health.
