For the time estimate question, this video seems to be saying that donation takes 3-4 hours and recovery is maybe 1 hour. The website gives more information:
Side effects may include back pain, fatigue, headache or bruising for a few days or weeks.
The counterfactual comparison is a good point. I couldn’t find any information about it on the website, but Wikipedia reports:
Because the odds that two random individuals are HLA matched exceeds one in 20,000, a registry’s success depends on a large number of volunteer donors.
Wikipedia also reports that the Be the Match registry has about 16 million members. This means that an average patient might have 800 matches, which bodes poorly for the marginal benefit of joining the list.
The probability of being an HLA match might be a lot lower than 1⁄20,000. Say that half the potential 16,000,000 donors would renege on donating if they were called, so we actually have 8,000,000 available members. A 1 in 20,000 chance implies that the chance that a given patient has no matches would be (1−1/20,000)8,000,000=2×10−174, when in reality the chance of having a match (probably with a donor who is willing to donate?) is at least 0.01. Maybe 1 in 2 million is more reasonable?
For the time estimate question, this video seems to be saying that donation takes 3-4 hours and recovery is maybe 1 hour. The website gives more information:
The counterfactual comparison is a good point. I couldn’t find any information about it on the website, but Wikipedia reports:
Wikipedia also reports that the Be the Match registry has about 16 million members. This means that an average patient might have 800 matches, which bodes poorly for the marginal benefit of joining the list.
The probability of being an HLA match might be a lot lower than 1⁄20,000. Say that half the potential 16,000,000 donors would renege on donating if they were called, so we actually have 8,000,000 available members. A 1 in 20,000 chance implies that the chance that a given patient has no matches would be (1−1/20,000)8,000,000=2×10−174, when in reality the chance of having a match (probably with a donor who is willing to donate?) is at least 0.01. Maybe 1 in 2 million is more reasonable?