I had no knowledge that his admin actually did something useful. I hope this can be saved. Knowing contemporary right-wingers, it's likely a goner.

So republicans are somehow against a program that provides HIV/AIDS medication to people in poor countries because it checks notes promotes abortion??

Republicans will say anything and do anything to make sure they hurt as many vulnerable people as possible.

RIP Pepfar. You kept it real.

As well as gutting the EPA, Nixon's greatest accomplishment. These aren't republicans, this is a death cult.

Politically, it was championed by some of the country’s most prominent Christian conservatives — like Bush speechwriter Michael Gerson and mega-evangelist Franklin Graham. The evangelicals provided the political muscle on the right, as well as a kind of unvarnished Christian moral argument for healing the sick, that ultimately got Bush and Congress on board — leading to PEPFAR’s creation in 2003. PEPFAR thus should not be seen only as a great American accomplishment, but also a great evangelical accomplishment.

When people talk about AIDS relief to Africa that provides zero funding for contraception on religious grounds, this is the program they’re talking about. It’s the same imperialist bullshit that’s been going on in Africa for centuries. If they really wanted to help people, they’d be sending billions of condoms a year. Prevent the spread instead of treating the disease.

The article completely glosses over what the evangelicals wanted in return for their support. Because just helping people wasn’t enough, it had to be on their terms. The writer for Vox then goes on to spend several paragraphs making the same weird “Trump was worse than Bush” comparisons that have become so popular among neo-liberals in recent years.

All-In-all, this is a terrible piece of journalism.

One half of the drug cocktail in Paxlovid is an AIDS drug called ritonavir, which is also used in a treatment for hepatitis. Aside from the humanitarian reasons for PEPFAR, there is great scientific benefit in continuing to sling that drug to immune compromised people so the science keeps rolling in, especially in South Africa with its biotechnology industry. Fucked up immune systems are the future for so many of us.

SARS-CoV-2 wouldn’t have to traverse much genetic distance to mutate around its single truly effective antiviral regimen, and going without that against current variants would suck much worse than against the original recipe. Many folks have important parts of their immune systems sapped by repeated infections, so antivirals become that much more crucial in keeping them out of the ICU or morgue. The wall of immunity is made of sand, and speedily mutating epidemic waves come in tides.

One of the shittiest outcomes here is that immunocompromised folks like insufficiently treated AIDS sufferers can become laboratories for gnarlier COVID variants. The XBB series came from somebody who was sick enough to have two variants in them at once for long enough that the strains exchanged genetic data and stepped up their game. I bet it sucked shit to be that sick for that long, too.

We’ll need to have studied ritonavir in the widest population possible if the scientists get kicked back to the drawing board on Paxlovid and roni can more fully wreck face again on paupers and plutocrats. (It’s also hard to believe Congress would stop gravy training the pharma companies benefiting from PEPFAR.) Maybe once our leaders can’t trivially concierge doctor their way out of danger, they can take some fucking plagues seriously again.

I hope those who are suffering can get their damn meds.

TIL dubya had an accomplishment.