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Tim Mannello
Williamsport
Since President George W. Bush started President's the Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief, or PEPFAR in 2003, the program has been credited with saving more than 26 million lives at the cost of 12 cents a day per saved person. Now that Donald Trump has stopped funding PEPFAR, one can hardly imagine any informed official saying that cutting off this funding would not lead to many deaths. But that's exactly what Elon Musk had to say about the effect of the elimination of the program. Secretary of State Marco Rubio repeated the same thing: "No one has died." Press Secretary and spokesperson of President Donald Trump, Karoline Leavitt tripled down on Musk's and Rubio's categorical denials. It's hard to believe they don't know better.
International organizations and news organizations like the BBC, the New York Times and Reuters have reported that people, including children, are indeed dying as a result of the end of PEPFAR. How many, no one knows, because with the end of the Program, no one is counting.
According to the School of Public Policy in College Park, Maryland, when asked what percentage of the federal budget should go to foreign aid, the majority of Americans says that "it should be at least 10 percent (Republicans 5 percent, Democrats 10 percent, Independents 10 percent). This majority thinks we already are spending 20% and that is way too much." Actually we spend about 1%.
As someone once said: "In the age of information, ignorance is a choice, not an accident." I think that is also true of intellectual laziness, and we will all be judged by both.