This is a bit of an amorphous question with tons of possible answers in some sense—e.g., the development of the scientific method—but actually identifying counterfactual benefits is tricky. The examples you listed probably don’t have major counterfactual benefits long into the future.
Seems unlikely for these examples. It’s not the scientific discovery that really matters; it’s the public health program implementing it, which is a lot more sensitive to pre-existing conditions than discovering a fact about the world is.
This is a bit of an amorphous question with tons of possible answers in some sense—e.g., the development of the scientific method—but actually identifying counterfactual benefits is tricky. The examples you listed probably don’t have major counterfactual benefits long into the future.
why not? smallpox might or might not have died out, but hookworm would still be around
Because if a given person didn’t solve the problem in year X, someone else may have solved the problem just a few years (maybe decades?) later.
Seems unlikely for these examples. It’s not the scientific discovery that really matters; it’s the public health program implementing it, which is a lot more sensitive to pre-existing conditions than discovering a fact about the world is.