RIVERCESS COUNTY, Liberia — He’s a 2-year-old boy named Sunday Dahn, lying in a coma in a rural health center with cerebral malaria. Even if Sunday survives, he may suffer permanent brain damage.
In Washington, we’ll see debates about President Trump’s proposal to slash humanitarian aid, and politicians will emerge as winners or losers depending on the outcome. But the real winners and losers are kids like Sunday.
As it turns out the aid budget that Trump wants to cut has absolutely nothing at all to do with malaria in Liberia.
But, you know, got to have a dying kid to wave about, right Nicholas?
In Washington, we’ll see debates about President Trump’s proposal to slash humanitarian aid, and politicians will emerge as winners or losers depending on the outcome.
What about the taxpayers? Or don’t they matter?
River Cess ? Apt name I suppose for a pit of malaria.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3056312/
The link above suggests that they don’t even know how malaria becomes cerebral malaria and don’t have much of a treatment beyond seeing who survives and how badly damaged they are by the disease.
So it is not as if more money would be of instant help anyway.
And of course the socialist gangsters running Africa into the ground have their needs to be met from available funds.
What’s his position on using DDT? Indoor residual spraying is safe for humans and effective at killing mosquitoes: http://apps.who.int/iris/bitstream/10665/69945/1/WHO_HTM_GMP_2011_eng.pdf It is also very cheap. With far less money malaria was at the point of being eradicated when it was banned in 1972 on very slim evidence by people like Kristoff.
‘Pregnant women in Liberia receive free mosquito nets to prevent malaria, and almost every household has received one — including Sunday’s.’
Yep. Withhold DDT, give ’em a net. The West coming to the aid of the incompetent sub-saharan Africans. Kristoff clamoring for MORE.
Foreign aid is judged by intentions, not results. It is destructive, but it makes Kristoff et al feel good. Kristoff wants Trump to spend more money so Kristoff can feel good.
If you read the full article you get gems like this:
“When mosquito nets are handed out free, they are sometimes misused; I’ve seen them turned into wedding dresses, fishing nets, sponges and chicken fencing.”
… all of which reduce the rate of malaria infection, no doubt.
Plus Chinese counterfeit drugs, people who don’t use the nets …
Wait a minute … let me check Wikipedia:
Self determination, anybody?
I find that most people in rural Liberia have never even heard of Donald Trump. Yet he will profoundly shape their lives, and deaths, for American health assistance benefits half the Liberian population.
Keep racking up your now-$19-Trillion-national-debt so that Africa can produce a billion more hungry mouths, bigots!
Kristoff has always been a purveyor of liberal porn. This is just the latest edition. Finding yourself shocked that he is both uninformed and superficial simply means you haven’t been paying attention to his views on just about anything else.
Remember this: If it’s in the New York Times, there’s a 99.9% chance it’s shit.
DDT was not banned. It was restricted for agricultural use, not for mosquito control. It’s being used so much that mosquitoes are becoming resistant to it.
Ljh, how do you expect to criticise this Kristoff idiot for lying through his teeth if you then turn around and do the same thing?
Mattew L
So it wasn’t banned, just used for the stupidest application.
Indoor DDT, family stays out for a few hours, all mossies dead so deffo not passing on any genetic resisitance.
Outdoor DDT… pretty much the opposite.
totall o/t
But when lots of govt workers are on holiday and the others are on weekend, they can still carry out fire saefty tests on panels on other high rises, results within hours.
But curiously they didn’t before.
WTF do we pay these 1 million cvnts for?
bloke in france: It’s being used for indoor control. That’s what most of the 3300 tons a year produced goes to.
Matthew L: the WHO now recognises the damage done by stopping the spraying programs. They were stopped on the precautionary principle in the hysteria generated by Rachel Carson and others which is why malaria has returned over large swathes where it had previously been eradicated. Death toll: at least 50million, mainly under fives.
Ljh
+1
DDT when sprayed on interior walls maintains its effect on mosquitos for months.
The cancer scare was merely that. One more scare. Yes I would prefer not to eat DDT but programmed tests and unfortunate accidental tests on soldiers indicate that there is no detectable increase in cancer. It degrades in the body and is eliminated over time. The effects on humans involve stimulation of the nervous system which disappears when the ingestion stops.
Wash your fruit and veg. But getting malaria is far worse.
Opposition to DDT is up there with the opposition to golden rice.
Green murder.
Let’s cut out the middleman in foreign aid to Africa, just buy every ruler a chalet in the Alps and give all their nephews a Mercedes.
…when it was banned in 1972…
It was banned for domestic use in the USA, which continued to manufacture and export it.
Much later, in 2001, it was banned internationally for agricultural use by the Stockholm Convention. Its use for disease vector control is not and never has been banned.
Without the agricultural ban, DDT resistance would be more widespread. The Stockholm Convention has been good for the use of DDT against malaria.
The WHO’s policy throughout has been to recommend the use of DDT for disease vector control where it’s likely to be effective.
malaria was at the point of being eradicated
There’s no truth in that. The WHO’s eradication programme in the 50s and 60s worked on a few islands (Taiwan, Sardinia…), but was abandoned in 1969 for lack of further progress.
India has produced its own DDT since the 50s, and continues to use it freely for mosquito control. The result is a DDT-resistant mosquito population. Malaria remains endemic.
SJW: post Rachel Carson malaria reclaimed large swathes of previously eradicated territory across Africa and elsewhere and it wasbecause authorities were intimidated into stoppin spraying.
If I remember rightly, it wasn’t the legal restrictions reduced the use of DDT for vector control. It was various western aid agencies stipulating non-DDT use as conditions for aid packages. Because Jocastas always know best.
Bis: precisely
malaria reclaimed large swathes of previously eradicated territory across Africa
Name them then. You can’t, because they don’t exist,
Like most things we haven’t solved, this issue is a lot more complicated than polemicists make out.
Which is of course the entire point of Tim’s post. The commentariat here should start applying a bit of his logic to their own beliefs.
SJW
Parts of South Africa for a start.
Yes it’s complicated, but alternative pyrethroid insecticides build up resistence too. Not sure which more easily. Bad spraying practises cause problems.
Solutions in some places, won’t work in others. Not all mosquitos breed in stagnant water for instance. The problem requires a varied inclusive approach and DDT should form part of it.
Bad (indiscriminate or over-use) use of DDT is worse than good use of DDT. Lots of DDT in the body is almost certainly not good. Correct spraying of interiors should not be a major problem (don’t lick the walls) and is way better than contracting malaria.
When reading the literature you get a lot of modal verbs; the mights, mays and coulds of our language and not a lot of definitely regarding the effects of DDT.
DDT? Cancer? (coffee is a carcinogen) not so much, low sperm counts, internal organs affected…. Malaria kills and that much is clear.
DDT works and we stopped using it without sufficient evidence and millions have paid with their lives.
Needs more study? Yes. Meanwhile, let’s hope people stop catching malaria.
“Like most things we haven’t solved, this issue is a lot more complicated than polemicists make out.”
No, it’s quite simple.
http://www.discoverthenetworks.org/viewSubCategory.asp?id=1259
“DDT was not banned.”
The Green Murder defense.
SJW:
South Africa: northern Kwazulu-Natal, lowveld of Mpumalanga and Limpopo provinces; Zimbabwe lowveld, Swaziland,, Zambian eastern section, Malawi around the lake, northern Botswana…all malaria free until use of DDT became unacceptable, all with malaria currently. Just the start of a list.
…all malaria free until use of DDT became unacceptable, all with malaria currently
Rubbish. DDT spraying in South Africa stopped in 1995 and restarted in 2000. If DDT spraying had made those regions malaria-free in 1995, which it hadn’t, it would have the same effect again by 2017.
Here‘s a history of malaria control in South Africa.
Spraying stopped in the seventies in South Africa when pyrethrins and organophosphates were substituted, something closer reading of the article you quoted would confirm. By the 1980s malaria had made a comeback despite these programs and travel advice once more recommended taking prophylactics in previously safe areas.
Put this on your reading list SJW:
Mabaso MLH, Sharp B, Lengeler C. Historical review of malaria control in southern Africa with an emphasis on the use of indoor residual house-spraying. Trop Med Int Health. 2004;9:846–856. [PubMed]
Maharaj R, Mthembu DJ, Sharp BL. Impact of DDT reintroduction on malaria transmission in KwaZulu-Natal. S Afr Med J. 2005;95:871–874. [PubMed]
These are from a definitive overview: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3114806/#!po=14.5833
“By 1994, the SA National Malaria Control Programme had decided to change policies and switch from DDT to pyrethroids for IRS, and this change came into effect in 1995”
Is that the closer reading you had in mind?
Your first link gives “1960–96 DDT, 1997–99 Deltamethrin (policy change), 2000 DDT (resistance to pyrethroids)”
You’re just making stuff up.
Spraying was scaled right back in response to the DDT scare and substitutes used. Speak to a field worker.
“Spraying was scaled right back in response to the DDT scare and substitutes used. Speak to a field worker.”
BUT IT WASN’T BANNED, DAMMIT!