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This is less about feeding a neighbor than digging them a latrine so they stop crapping in your water supply.
This is a valid strategic conclusion. It would require America ceding Africa and probably the Middle East as strategic theatres to China and, to a lesser degree, Russia and maybe France. (This may be worth the cost.)
It would also require trade and travel decoupling from both China and Europe, as well as from the Middle East and probably South America and Canada, too, given the transmission vectors inherent in those flows. (This isn’t worth the cost.)
So yes, if Americans accept lower living standards this equilibrium theoretically works. (Even if it’s stupid.) If we want to capitalize on global trade, and be able to vacation and do business wherever we please and have a reasonable expectation of being allowed to return home, on the other hand, and pay a fraction of the gains from the former to safeguard our health, this strategy fails.
Why should we expect anyone to step up? The default state of diseases is that they are not managed.
And as China (and maybe even Europe) do pivot, I'm not sure why they'd prioritise preventing it from spreading to Americans (we have troops stationed in the region) versus to their own homelands.
>Why should we expect anyone to step up?
Why should we expect the US to step up? Funny how ONLY the US has responsibility for safeguarding the world, but the supposed new world leaders don't.
It's almost as if the double standard is off the charts.
Le all-mighty dollar, it tastes best when given freely no?
> It's almost as if the double standard is off the charts.
I agree. I love how the same people will typically call for US withdrawal from any/all military theatres; whilst promoting sending <FORCED> aid at the end of a needle. I think a lot of these people were of the "lock them up for their covid heresy" category...
If this was China exerting influence I'm sure we'd start complaining there's poison in the needles, bribery and how they should go back and focus on China.
The disease control interventions really are a mix of teaching and doing. In acute situations, experts are brought in to do (some of) the things. But mostly it's training and outreach and supplying equipment to do routine disease control and surveillance of issues that need help.
That's literally what USAID was providing. Both teaching fish AND also feeding them.
I'm a wonderful citizen of heir u-turn starmer unfortunately so plenty of wanting to clear the waterways here :P
With what money? There's a reason they're dependent on USAID.
> I'm sure there's a parable about teaching someone to fish rather than feeding them
Unfortunately the priorities of USAID (and European foreign aid as well) aren't exactly aligned with that paradigm. It's the worst expressed in agriculture because we just dumped our excess production on Africa to keep our prices stable, but foreign aid being sustainable is a relatively new and not really widespread requirement.
How much does BASIC hygiene cost it's like manners. It's education (which is more than well funded at a "throw cash at it problem".
> we just dumped our excess production
Well in a nutshell, yes we'd dumping quite a lot on Africa, that doesn't mean we should shore up the system with yet another western derived screw-up. At this point I'll go for the good old star trek perspective of impacting a cultures development by suddenly advancing their technological position.
Unless you have industrial pollutants in which case you also have someone to blame...
We didn't get this far as a species being that ignorant