These kinds of analyses are generally a waste of time, because the people performing them have no idea about how outbreaks are identified and controlled. They have good intentions, but outbreak control isn’t a simple linear world where you know all the variables and you can work with averages. As a result, these estimates tend to have little basis in reality.
Take the numbers from Berstein et al—they’re patently ridiculous! “$19 billion to close down China’s wildlife farming industry”. Never mind the credibility of the $19bn figure… who’s going to tell China to shut down anything? Who think’s the CCP are just going to do what they’re told? What kind of a plan is this??
If you want to do a cost/benefit analysis, you need to do it by strategy. And there are lots of different strategies.
For example, what’s the cost/benefit of a rapid elimination strategy? What’s the cost/benefit on having wastewater / sewerage / environmental / random testing in major international ports of entry? What’s the cost/benefit of investing in rapid testing manufacturing capacity? Or of training HCWs to implement the strategy?
If you respond quickly, you can reduce the size of the problem by orders of magnitude, and therefore reduce the costs of resolving it by orders of magnitude too. So where does that appear in the analysis? Nowhere, because these kinds of analyses don’t allow for it. Instead, they just make vague assumptions about reducing healthcare costs, which is totally unsatisfactory.
Take the numbers from Berstein et al—they’re patently ridiculous!
Sidenote. I would not be surprised if their numbers are very off, but I think it is better to avoid terms like “ridiculous”, which are confrontational, and therefore can make thinking clearly more difficult.
These kinds of analyses are generally a waste of time, because the people performing them have no idea about how outbreaks are identified and controlled. They have good intentions, but outbreak control isn’t a simple linear world where you know all the variables and you can work with averages. As a result, these estimates tend to have little basis in reality.
Take the numbers from Berstein et al—they’re patently ridiculous! “$19 billion to close down China’s wildlife farming industry”. Never mind the credibility of the $19bn figure… who’s going to tell China to shut down anything? Who think’s the CCP are just going to do what they’re told? What kind of a plan is this??
If you want to do a cost/benefit analysis, you need to do it by strategy. And there are lots of different strategies.
For example, what’s the cost/benefit of a rapid elimination strategy? What’s the cost/benefit on having wastewater / sewerage / environmental / random testing in major international ports of entry? What’s the cost/benefit of investing in rapid testing manufacturing capacity? Or of training HCWs to implement the strategy?
If you respond quickly, you can reduce the size of the problem by orders of magnitude, and therefore reduce the costs of resolving it by orders of magnitude too. So where does that appear in the analysis? Nowhere, because these kinds of analyses don’t allow for it. Instead, they just make vague assumptions about reducing healthcare costs, which is totally unsatisfactory.
I’ve tried to explain this before...
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/utE4WqYjjmYDwoiuJ/pandemicriskman-s-quick-takes#u2JxaKrmfJF4hbfh5
Thanks for the comment!
I took Millett & Snyder-Beattie 2017′s and Bernstein et. al 2022′s numbers at face value, but they are far from rigorous estimates, and I would agree better modelling is needed.
Sidenote. I would not be surprised if their numbers are very off, but I think it is better to avoid terms like “ridiculous”, which are confrontational, and therefore can make thinking clearly more difficult.