Ebola sounds scary, but it’s not terribly infectious, nor widespread, nor difficult to prevent. Much worse are insidious and deadly diseases like Malaria, Tuberculosis, Neglected Tropical Diseases (NTDs), Maternal and Neonatal Infections (NNI), Cholera and Diarrheal diseases (CDD). USAID helped to mitigate these—as well as HIV/AIDs, Polio, Influenza, and starvation—yet Mr. Musk only mentions the cancellation of Ebola prevention as a mistake, even though far more die of other preventable diseases.
Data aggregated in MacOS Numbers, assembled in R, plotted via ggplot to SVG device, then refined in Adobe Illustrator.
There are [a lot of quotes](https://www.usglc.org/our-issue/quotes/) about this, and the good USAID does, but I think the most relevant one here is from Mitch McConnel.
>“I for one – just speaking for myself – think the diplomatic portion of the federal budget is very important and you get results a lot cheaper, frequently, than you do on the defense side… I’m not in favor of reducing what we call the 150 account.”
But none of this is for America. It’s not USAID. It’s FOREIGNAID.
Good data but I believe there’s an error.
2.44 trillion is FY 2025 to date spending.
For FY 2024, USG spent 6.75 Trillion.
Yeah don’t care – spend US tax dollars on US citizens first. Too many veterans and older people in this country need help before we worry about the rest of the world. Sorry not sorry.
Maybe it is just me, I don’t understand this data visualization at all. Honestly I don’t even understand OPs statement apart from “USAID is good, lets keep it”. How 2 and 3 are related? Why the columns are of the same size? The only conclusion I get from here is how tiny USAID assistance to regions with Ebola (is it event related to Ebola itself?) compared to US Budget, and how little people died from Ebola compared to few other diseases on column 3.
Last year,. the U.S. spent nearly 2 Trillion more than it took in. When we start having a surplus, maybe then we can focus on these types of issues. Until this happens, the U.S. needs to run on rice and beans. The U.S. is so poor that other countries should be supporting us.
The malaria assistance is gonna be devastating.
You’re not speaking a language that Republicans understand.
I’m sorry. USAID had 25 billion dollars budget? That is absolutely ridiculous
Why is it 3D? Makes it harder to read and doesn’t represent any useful information
Like anything the government creates, it starts off with good intentions then slowly morphs into something horrific due to the corruption. It’s unfortunate we are talking about this now, but it’s also a good thing that we are looking into it to try to get it right
![[OC] USAID's Ebola Prevention was a Minor Aspect of its Critical Work for Deadlier Diseases](https://www.europesays.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/n2xl9b91tple1-1920x1024.png)
12 comments
Ebola sounds scary, but it’s not terribly infectious, nor widespread, nor difficult to prevent. Much worse are insidious and deadly diseases like Malaria, Tuberculosis, Neglected Tropical Diseases (NTDs), Maternal and Neonatal Infections (NNI), Cholera and Diarrheal diseases (CDD). USAID helped to mitigate these—as well as HIV/AIDs, Polio, Influenza, and starvation—yet Mr. Musk only mentions the cancellation of Ebola prevention as a mistake, even though far more die of other preventable diseases.
Data aggregated in MacOS Numbers, assembled in R, plotted via ggplot to SVG device, then refined in Adobe Illustrator.
US, FY 2024 Financial Report $2.44 Trillion in Net Costs [https://fiscaldata.treasury.gov/americas-finance-guide/federal-spending/](https://fiscaldata.treasury.gov/americas-finance-guide/federal-spending/)
USAID, FY 2024 Summaries $25.34 Billion in Total Obligations [https://usaspending.gov/agency/agency-for-international-development?fy=2024§ion=overview](https://usaspending.gov/agency/agency-for-international-development?fy=2024§ion=overview)
Disease statistics aggregated from who.int, nih.gov, healthdata.org, and unaids.org. Final tally follows:
|Disease|Mortality (est ceiling)|Total (percent of all)|
|:-|:-|:-|
|Tuberculosis|1250000|23.745|
|Diarrheal Diseases|1200000|22.795|
|Influenza|650000|12.347|
|HIV/AIDS|630000|11.967|
|Malaria|600000|11.397|
|Neonatal Infections|550000|10.448|
|Neglected Tropical Diseases|200000|3.799|
|Cholera|143000|2.716|
|Maternal Infections|30000|0.570|
|Ebola|11325|0.215|
|Polio|10|0.000|
USAID is also a farm subsidy. It gets money from the US Department of Agriculture to buy food from small/rural farmers in an effort to help them stay competitive with the Big Agricultural Industry. About [$2b of it’s annual budget](https://www.dtnpf.com/agriculture/web/ag/news/article/2025/02/03/usaid-tie-agriculture-usda) (about 8%) goes to this. This food [contributes to emergency assistance](https://www.usda.gov/about-usda/news/press-releases/2024/04/18/usda-usaid-deploy-1-billion-emergency-food-assistance) that, last year alone, went to 18 countries.
There are [a lot of quotes](https://www.usglc.org/our-issue/quotes/) about this, and the good USAID does, but I think the most relevant one here is from Mitch McConnel.
>“I for one – just speaking for myself – think the diplomatic portion of the federal budget is very important and you get results a lot cheaper, frequently, than you do on the defense side… I’m not in favor of reducing what we call the 150 account.”
But none of this is for America. It’s not USAID. It’s FOREIGNAID.
Good data but I believe there’s an error.
2.44 trillion is FY 2025 to date spending.
For FY 2024, USG spent 6.75 Trillion.
Yeah don’t care – spend US tax dollars on US citizens first. Too many veterans and older people in this country need help before we worry about the rest of the world. Sorry not sorry.
Maybe it is just me, I don’t understand this data visualization at all. Honestly I don’t even understand OPs statement apart from “USAID is good, lets keep it”. How 2 and 3 are related? Why the columns are of the same size? The only conclusion I get from here is how tiny USAID assistance to regions with Ebola (is it event related to Ebola itself?) compared to US Budget, and how little people died from Ebola compared to few other diseases on column 3.
Last year,. the U.S. spent nearly 2 Trillion more than it took in. When we start having a surplus, maybe then we can focus on these types of issues. Until this happens, the U.S. needs to run on rice and beans. The U.S. is so poor that other countries should be supporting us.
The malaria assistance is gonna be devastating.
You’re not speaking a language that Republicans understand.
I’m sorry. USAID had 25 billion dollars budget? That is absolutely ridiculous
Why is it 3D? Makes it harder to read and doesn’t represent any useful information
Like anything the government creates, it starts off with good intentions then slowly morphs into something horrific due to the corruption. It’s unfortunate we are talking about this now, but it’s also a good thing that we are looking into it to try to get it right
Comments are closed.