Covid brought many vile characters within the government bureaucracy into the limelight. So-called public health experts that only occasionally became newsworthy figures became household names. Trump’s Covid task force included several of these dark figures, including Anthony Fauci, Robert Redfield, and Deborah Birx, who was most known for bedazzling her masks after previously dissuading their use.
Of all places for Deborah Birx to appear for an interview, Christianity Today is not the first thought, but leave it to Russell Moore’s Compromise Today to find new ways of debasing themselves to the culture of the world. Never forget that many in Big Eva attacked Christians who were persecuted by their own government—that is federal, state, and local, over lockdowns, mandates, and vaccine passports.
Political Context
The article entitled, “What the US Can Learn from PEPFAR,” is a condensed interview of Birx by CT’s Emily Belz. The insinuation in the article is that Birx is a Christian who graduated from Houghton College, a Wesleyan college in New York, and worked for PEPFAR for decades.
PEPFAR stands for “President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief” and was an initiative started under the Bush Administration in 2003 in response to the HIV/AIDS “pandemic.” Recently, this program has garnered conservative scrutiny over its upcoming five-year renewal in September.
As a senior fellow now at the nonprofit Bush Center, Birx can’t argue for or against particular legislation. But she shared what she thinks US faith communities can draw from the success of PEPFAR.
What is unmentioned is why groups like Heritage Action, Family Research Council, and Susan B Anthony are intent on scoring Congressmen on voting for this program. In a rare moment of conservatism, Representative Christopher Smith (NJ-4), with his 46% Liberty Score, decided to take a stand against the renewal of PEPFAR due to its use of federal funds to promote abortion. According to Smith, “President Biden hijacked PEPFAR” with a global abortion agenda and “Bad actor nongovernment organizations (NGOs) that promote abortion have received at least $1.34 billion from PEPFAR funds.” This includes organizations which lobby to expand abortion in Africa, like Population Services International who received $96.5 million. The connection between PEPFAR, President Biden, and abortion goes unmentioned at Christianity Today. Other concerns surrounding PEPFAR include government waste and profiteering.
With trillions in federal debt, $5.4 billion annually is but a drop in the bucket, but it should be noted that PEPFAR is the largest US global health initiative, and its top ten contractors receive 40% of the money and only 20-30% of the funds go to the people in need. The claims that this program saved 25 million lives is both laughable and unverifiable, though not as egregious as Trump saving 100 million lives with his Covid vaccine.
Deborah Birx Interview
After citing an unprovable statistic that PEPFAR saved 25 million lives, Belz then asks what “ideas from the program that are translatable to the US?”
Birx answers in the following:
HIV, malaria, and tuberculosis are the deadly diseases in Africa. But America has its own deadly diseases—diseases of despair and loss of hope. And that’s where the church plays such an outsized role in bringing hope back to the community.
I think we could learn a lot from PEPFAR in the United States on how to do our healthcare delivery better. With HIV/AIDS, we have to remember that when there was nothing, faith-based organizations [in Africa] were there doing palliative care. And long after the HIV pandemic is well controlled, they will still be there, evolving with the needs.
We can utilize what we saw and learn to tackle opioids, to tackle obesity in the United States—in a cost-effective way. I think people right now are sitting back and waiting for the federal government. And I’d like to remind everybody that before there was money, there were churches and communities holding their hands and supporting those families.
In this moment in time, where we no longer really have health care in our rural areas, we do still have churches.
This is classic pandering from a woman whose legacy is participating in efforts which increased depression and decreased public health outcomes while working for public health agencies. This is a glorified “you need to do better” speech from someone whose former government agencies did little, if anything, to address these issues during her lifetime as they were captured by corporate interests. Within America, health issues as depression, obesity, and opioid addiction have all gotten worse during her lifetime, so trust the experts.
There is much the Church could and is doing regarding opioids, but those enslaved to drugs are difficult to reach and often reside in heavily unchurched urban areas. From a policy standpoint, border security is required to decrease the supply of opioids, which is not something the church can do in ministry.
Regarding obesity, the patriarchal, pro-masculinity drive that is being derided as “white supremacy,” “Christian Nationalism,” or “toxic” places a heavy emphasis on physical fitness, and view obesity as unmasculine. Pastors should be unafraid to critique obesity that goes beyond resorting to trivial slaps at church dinners or snack “ministries.” This is a societal problem partially caused by the quality of the food supply and the classic equation of “input minus output” regarding calories. But it requires strong men to say these things from the pulpit, which Christianity Today does not want as is exhibited in the persona of Russell Moore.
PEPFAR has been around 20 years. Have you seen any new generation of faith-based people in the US be interested in the program?
I haven’t.
It is no surprise that American Evangelicals are disinterested in PEPFAR, especially since African AIDS epidemic is both continuous and inconsequential within their lives. This is perceived as a negative by Christianity Today. Ironically, HIV/AIDS is relatively insignificant in Africa, but it is lucrative. For African nations, it is a means of receiving foreign aid. PEPFAR is nothing but another perpetual government waste program, so why should a generation of Americans Christians be rallied to the cause, especially one that was sold through hyperbolic alarmism?
And so I think there’s a lot of lessons to be learned. I hope everybody takes a step back and realizes we’re stronger together—Republicans, Democrats, Muslims, evangelicals—because in the end, we care about our communities, and our communities are not monolithic.
Birx will pander to say that the church needs to do more, like the alleged African churches did regarding AIDS, but she ultimately concludes with a call to embrace multiculturalism, even across religious lines, which falls in line with Christianity Today’s embrace of moral decline.
Duesberg Hypothesis on HIV/AIDS
The similarities between Covid and AIDS cannot be understated, as what transpired in the 80’s became the template for the Covid response, one that prioritized pharmaceutical profits over healthcare outcomes. The Duesberg Hypothesis was prominently featured in Robert F Kennedy Jr.’s The Real Anthony Fauci. Peter Duesberg contends that AIDS is not caused by HIV and attributes the disease to a variety of factors, including malnutrition, sexually transmitted diseases, and drug use. Basically, AIDS is environmental or nutritional, not microbial. This would be likened to obesity causing heart disease or smoking causing lung cancer. These are not diseases caused by microbes, which is why they do not follow the same patterns as typical viruses with eventual immunity.
For the layman, this is most evident in the data as to who is afflicted by AIDS. Based on Duesberg’s analysis, (which is from 2000), American AIDS is 85% male and predominantly drug using homosexuals, compared with a more even gender distribution in Africa. As Duesberg writes:
However, it is evident from the WHO data that the African AIDS epidemic is not following the bell-shaped curve of an exponential rise and subsequent sharp drop with immunity, that are typical of infectious epidemics. Instead it drags on like a nutritionally or environmentally caused disease (Seligmann et al., 1984), that steadily affects, what appears to be only a very small percentage of the African population. [boldness not added]
Given a current African population of 616 million (United Nations Environment Programme, June 15, 2000), and an average of 75,000 African AIDS cases per year, it follows that only 0.012% of the African population is annually suffering or dying from AIDS. Likewise only 0.01% of the South African population was suffering from AIDS between 1994 and 1996, based on the 4,500 annual cases and a population of approximately 44 million (US Agency for International Development, “HIV/AIDS in the developing World”, May 1999). This means that the new African AIDS epidemic only represents a very small fraction of normal African mortality.
Statistically, AIDS is insignificant in Africa and could easily be attributed to a host of environmental factors or malnutrition. He would go on to describe that even if all 75K diagnosed HIV positive cases died, then it would be trivial compared to the 12 million annual deaths. It is a rounding error that has been used to propagate perpetual government spending that is ultimately lining the pockets of corrupt NGO’s to the tune of over $5.5 billion per year. He further attributes the higher AIDS to HIV ratio in America compared to Africa to the medical regime. It should be stated that “Long-term morbidity related to antiretroviral therapy includes liver, renal, glucose, and lipid abnormalities, and cardiovascular and bone disease.” In other words, the cure is worse than the disease.
So no, Jesus does not have AIDS, as Russell Moore infamously wrote, and neither do those Africans.
Conclusion
Christianity Today interviewed a duplicitous Jezabel to advocate for a government waste program while bashing Christians for opposing the renewal of PEPFAR specifically because the money is going to support abortion activist NGO’s in the third world. Congress is unlikely to rescind this program, and thus stop the grift, but the narrative of HIV/AIDS in promoting the homosexual agenda within America cannot be overlooked or forgotten. Emily Belz previously praised PEPFAR in an article sub header, “Twenty years ago, Republicans, Democrats, evangelicals, gay activists, and African leaders joined forces to combat AIDS. Will their legacy survive today’s partisanship?” This was April of 2023 when Belz praised the cooperation with gay activists.
Additionally, society must reevaluate the AIDS narrative and be receptive to the Duesberg Hypothesis. American foreign policy of warmongering largely accomplished nothing while foreign health aid to Africa centered around a manufactured crisis. Instead of giving Africa expensive, patented pharmaceutical products, what if America built wells with clean water? Perhaps HIV/AIDS would magically reverse itself through a healthier populace.
Christianity Today advocates Christians supporting endless government waste that will fund abortions overseas with little tangible improvement for sub-Saharan Africa. There is nothing the Church can learn from PEPFAR except the perpetuity of government waste and the depths to which Christianity Today will advocate liberalism in the church.
