From the Sonoran Alliance (emphasis in original):
…Today, in this 24 hours, while you are reading this, more people worldwide are dying from malaria than a year of war in Iraq and Afghanistan combined. The media can make time if they want to. We had wealthy suburbanites outside of Washington DC earnestly ask us if we were afraid of the avian flu. With the real deal, malaria, cholera, yellow fever, dysentery, meningitis, dengue fever … well avian flu … wildly mild in comparison, bordering on a joke … has a lot of serious real-world competition.
What was going on alarmed us: WHY are so many Americans today terrified of computer modelswhile ignorant of common brute reality? Africa is not a country, it’s a huge continent plagued by malaria. America is actually in the minority of the planet which isn’t affected by malaria … thanks to the efforts of Americans.
In America, Malaria-free wasn’t a natural gift, it had to be accomplished.
With battle triumphs under America’s belt in the war against malaria, how goes the war today? When Bill and Melinda Gates announced their Gates Foundation’s support of anti-malaria efforts, they discovered their one gift had nearly doubled the entire world’s funding for that sector. So many people at risk and affected, yet so underfunded.
President George W. Bush committed billions to fighting and treating malaria and HIV/AIDS in Africa. When Africans came to the White House to thank him, the media mentioned not the funding, not the diseases, not Bush’s unprecedented efforts to help Africans have a better quality of life, but that he was an awkward dancer.
Decades ago, Americans broke the back of malaria parasite transmission in the United States with a massive integrated public health program. America’s astounding transformation of Panama a hundred years ago during the construction of the Panama Canal from a deadly, disease-ridden zone to a beautiful, healthy, tropical settlement is a tour-de-force of Occam’s Razor applied up and down to cut malaria and yellow fever out of the area, a superb case study on how it’s done.* The anopheles mosquitoes continued on … but no longer infected with the deadly malaria parasite, yet the drive was cut short in Africa before that critical tipping point had been reached so malaria came back with a vengeance.
hat tip: Instapundit
