• Lancet paper from 2025 said USAID stopped nearly 92 million deaths over 20 years.
• It also projected more than 14 million extra deaths by 2030 if funding stayed cut, including 4.5 million children.
• NPR BBC AP NBC New Yorker Washington Post all ran with the numbers.
• Ro Khanna cited the 4.5 million kids figure and said Musk possibly sentenced them to death.
• Global death rate fell a lot from 2001 to 2021. If the old rate held, about 79 million extra people would have died.
• Study claims USAID saved more than the entire drop plus another 13 million.
• China alone drove most of the mortality decline and got almost no USAID money.
• Least developed countries that got the most USAID per person saw death rates rise.
• Authors used dummy variables to erase years when mortality went up and funding did not.
• They dropped over 100 countries from the data.
• Critics say it is pure correlation dressed up as impact.