This market resolves when reliable sources aligned with global health and charities report that PEPFAR-funded organizations are once again receiving aid money, for at least 50% of their previous budget.
See also: https://manifold.markets/TiredCliche/will-pepfar-funding-be-unfrozen-by
Update 2025-03-15 (PST) (AI summary of creator comment):
Funding Source: The aid money must come from the US government.
Source Flexibility: It does not require funding to be sourced exclusively from USAID.
Update 2025-03-16 (PST) (AI summary of creator comment):
Calculation Method Clarification:
Aggregate Funding: Sum all the money sent to PEPFAR programs rather than evaluating funding on a per-charity or sub-program basis.
Threshold Requirement: The aggregate total must be at least 50% of the previous budget.
Program Adjustments: Cancellation or changes to smaller sub-programs do not automatically count against the criteria as long as the overall funding meets the threshold.
1,000@MartinRandall I'm not 100% sure but it's something like total up all the money sent to pepfar programs, and check if it's at least half of the previous budget. So cancelling smaller sub-programs of pepfar may be ok
The case against PEPFAR is pretty interesting (from a twitter rando):
https://x.com/simczar/status/1894850807494849024
To be effective, you need to take the antiretroviral drug regularly, approaching every day. Many (how many?) of the recipients don't follow through with this. (Poverty makes it hard to commit to anything consistently.)
Just like antibiotics, if you don't follow through taking the drug, it provides an opportunity for the virus to mutate and become resistant. PEPFAR is thus increasing the odds of making the medication not work for anyone.
Another PEPFAR program provides a drug for free that protects against getting HIV in the first place for unprotected sex. But this leads to people not using condoms, which leads to the spread of other STDs and more abortions. And also HIV because they don't take this drug consistently either. The better message would be to always wear a condom. (It seems they did also provide free condoms though!)
They paid a lot for local staff and that stole the best health professionals from other high-impact roles like being a doctor, which had a negative impact on health locally.
Wikipedia says PEPFAR failed audits: "[M]ost of the award files did not include all required documents" to demonstrate proper monitoring. So likely some non-trivial portion of the money didn't make it to recipients.
@JamesGrugett not sure how seriously to take the increased mutation risk given that it hasn't happened yet. Also reducing the prevalence of HIV, eg by preventing transmission from mother to child, should reduce mutation risk. Complex enough to leave to scientists and economists, not Twitter randoms.
18 separate PEPFAR-related programs have been confirmed cancelled. You can count them on the list linked here: https://healthpolicy-watch.news/from-albania-to-zambia-list-of-cancelled-usaid-projects-provides-insight-into-us-influence/
It seems possible or probable that at least one PEPFAR-related organization will continue to receive money from the state department. It's harder to say whether the total will be half of the previous funding, given the 18 programs that were cancelled!
I'm a fan of DOGE, but leaving PEPFAR in limbo seems like a mistake. When will funding be restored?
@JamesGrugett You do have to wonder about an "efficiency" effort that cancels first one of the most efficient live-saving aid programs ever.
@JamesGrugett Every story about DOGE I actually dig into just seems to reveal stunning incompetence, the grant funding reforms have sent biomedical researchers packing, and the social security workforce cuts have ballooned phoneline wait times from ~30 minutes to over 4 hours average!