Regarding the first question, I just briefly looked again at the report and indeed I don’t see that explicitly taken into account. I only vaguely remember thinking about that, and I’m not sure how that was resolved.
I think the main causal pathway they used in their report is QALY gains from people quitting smoking, so that sounds like it wouldn’t change drastically if the intervention was delayed by, say, a couple of years. So I agree that this is a good question to look into further, and I expect that could indeed reduce the cost effectiveness by 3x-10x. Great catch David!
Regarding the first question, I just briefly looked again at the report and indeed I don’t see that explicitly taken into account. I only vaguely remember thinking about that, and I’m not sure how that was resolved.
I think the main causal pathway they used in their report is QALY gains from people quitting smoking, so that sounds like it wouldn’t change drastically if the intervention was delayed by, say, a couple of years. So I agree that this is a good question to look into further, and I expect that could indeed reduce the cost effectiveness by 3x-10x. Great catch David!