(1) Itâs true that hypertension is less neglected in the rich world, but: (a) Even in the rich world we incur a cost from hypertension even needing to be treated in the first place (i.e. health burden given that thereâs always a time gap between identification and effective treatment, plus the economic burden of those drugs and general treatment support). (b) Also the blunt fact of the matter is that developing countries are poor. This has two upshotsâone being that they lack the basic infrastructure to deliver drugs effectively (e.g. one expert kept emphasizing how in Africa people in Africa have to walk great distances and wait a long while to get pills); and another is that EA funding would basically have to fund this as a permanent thing (like malaria nets), but thatâs counterfactually extremely costly.
(2) The falls in BP have significant impact at the population level! Hence the CEA pencilling out to suggest a very cost-effective intervention. Itâs true of a lot of potential causes/âinterventions, to be fairâwhereby we reduce some small risk by 0.0X% but if you have 10^Y people it can still be cost effective at scale.
(3) Basically citing from the report, âa meta-analysis suggests that food can be significantly reduced in sodium without significantly affecting consumer acceptability, and as the GCAH factsheet says, âgradual (over a few months) but substantial reductions in sodium of processed foods can be made without altering the perceived taste of foodâ, which makes sense given that our taste budsadjust to salt (and sugar) levels and get more or less sensitive accordingly.â
That said, I fundamentally agree that itâs going to be politically difficult, far more so than other regulatory stuff like mandatory food reformulationâwe see something similar for climate change, where people hate carbon taxes but are fine with quotas even though they practically end up costing consumers the same thing. Overall, this goes into the assessment that sodium policy advocacy has perhaps a 3% chance of successâwhich I think is fairly reasonable/âconservative, insofar as it implies that an organization making a concerted effort across 33 countries (for 3 years each), might expect success in just one.
I suspect that an organization that does lobbying in this area might choose to drop the tax stuff if they find it too difficult, and just focus on the regulatory or education aspects.
Hi Henry,
(1) Itâs true that hypertension is less neglected in the rich world, but: (a) Even in the rich world we incur a cost from hypertension even needing to be treated in the first place (i.e. health burden given that thereâs always a time gap between identification and effective treatment, plus the economic burden of those drugs and general treatment support). (b) Also the blunt fact of the matter is that developing countries are poor. This has two upshotsâone being that they lack the basic infrastructure to deliver drugs effectively (e.g. one expert kept emphasizing how in Africa people in Africa have to walk great distances and wait a long while to get pills); and another is that EA funding would basically have to fund this as a permanent thing (like malaria nets), but thatâs counterfactually extremely costly.
(2) The falls in BP have significant impact at the population level! Hence the CEA pencilling out to suggest a very cost-effective intervention. Itâs true of a lot of potential causes/âinterventions, to be fairâwhereby we reduce some small risk by 0.0X% but if you have 10^Y people it can still be cost effective at scale.
(3) Basically citing from the report, âa meta-analysis suggests that food can be significantly reduced in sodium without significantly affecting consumer acceptability, and as the GCAH factsheet says, âgradual (over a few months) but substantial reductions in sodium of processed foods can be made without altering the perceived taste of foodâ, which makes sense given that our taste buds adjust to salt (and sugar) levels and get more or less sensitive accordingly.â
That said, I fundamentally agree that itâs going to be politically difficult, far more so than other regulatory stuff like mandatory food reformulationâwe see something similar for climate change, where people hate carbon taxes but are fine with quotas even though they practically end up costing consumers the same thing. Overall, this goes into the assessment that sodium policy advocacy has perhaps a 3% chance of successâwhich I think is fairly reasonable/âconservative, insofar as it implies that an organization making a concerted effort across 33 countries (for 3 years each), might expect success in just one.
I suspect that an organization that does lobbying in this area might choose to drop the tax stuff if they find it too difficult, and just focus on the regulatory or education aspects.