I think the short of it is that trying to model the counterfactual impact of a reduction in diabetes prevalence on reduced COVID-19 burden would be too tough, relying as it does not just on complex epidemiological modelling but also inherently unknowable future scenarios. None of the experts we talked to raised this as a live issue, in any case, so my assumption was that post 2020-2022 it’s not that significant compared to the global disease burden of DMT2 itself, especially on a long term basis.
Thanks for the post. I find it weird that we sort of neglect scalable interventions regarding non-communicable diseases (except for tobacco).
I was hoping that after covid-19 this would become a priority. Btw, I noticed that you do not use evidence associated with the pandemic—even though DMT was one of the main predictors of mortality:
Diabetes is most important cause for mortality in COVID-19 hospitalized patients: Systematic review and meta-analysis—PMC (nih.gov)
Diabetes prevalence and mortality in COVID-19 patients: a systematic review, meta-analysis, and meta-regression—PubMed (nih.gov)
Of course, the main datasets on the burden of DMT-2 will not include covid mortality. But have tried looking into this?
I think the short of it is that trying to model the counterfactual impact of a reduction in diabetes prevalence on reduced COVID-19 burden would be too tough, relying as it does not just on complex epidemiological modelling but also inherently unknowable future scenarios. None of the experts we talked to raised this as a live issue, in any case, so my assumption was that post 2020-2022 it’s not that significant compared to the global disease burden of DMT2 itself, especially on a long term basis.