The 14 Million Deaths Lie

“14 Million Deaths” is the headline for several news organizations over the past few days. This dire new estimate of global death for the next 5 years comes from a published journal article from a highly respected medical journal called “The Lancet.”¹ In this article the authors claim estimated impacts in numbers of deaths worldwide from the dismantling or even just significant cuts of the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) that are promised by the Trump administration.²

The “Lancet” study uses some usually reliable methods of data analysis to make forecasts for various conditions. These methods include some very technical procedures, such as “Multivariable Poisson models with robust SEs adjusted for demographic, socioeconomic, and health-care factors.”

Without closely examining the accuracy of each and without examining the integrity of the performance of these methods, when you get into the ‘meat’ of the claims…in other words, where did the data come from that the authors used, you find the big lie that is used to attack some Trump administration policies. The sources can be found in the notes at the bottom of the charts and references at the end of the article. Here is an example showing the source for their data on the chart the authors use that purports to show how many deaths USAID funding averted in 2007-2008, 2015, and 2020-2021 on page 5 of the article:

“Data are rate ratio coefficients (95% CI). In the row headers, data are mean (lowest value to highest value). Time shocks are controls for specific years of economic or health crisis (2007–08, 2015, 2020, and 2021). ASMR=age-standardised mortality rate. USAID=US Agency for International Development.”

In other words, the “Lancet” article claims data integrity but uses data provided by the agency (USAID) that is to be cut or discontinued. If you look closely at the fine print at the bottom of the charts you find that consistently the “Lancet” uses data provided by the USAID to justify their claim that 14 million people will die because of Trump’s cuts to USAID.

When you peruse the references you will also find that the sources for the article apart from USAID, are media that are generally hostile to President Trump or are global organizations that receive USAID funding and some that receive other types of funding from the US (e.g. The World Health Organization, United Nations, Department of Economic and Social Affairs, etc.) that are likely to be cut or are openly hostile to Trump policies, in general. The “Lancet” article’s title claims that they are “Evaluating the impact of two decades of USAID interventions” to project these 14 million deaths.³ We here at I Vote My Vote think that a reliable “evaluation” of USAID should come from studies done without the inherent bias that this study provides.

Evidence has shown that USAID is a program rife with waste and fraud. Earlier in June, the Justice department announced that a “USAID Official and Three Corporate Executives Plead Guilty To Decade-Long Bribery Scheme Involving Over $550 Million In Contracts.”⁴ When the waste and fraud rampant in USAID is considered, a complete overhaul of how the US funds overseas aid is imperative!