Per the GBD, it’s around 53:47 years lived with disability to years of life lost (so slight majority of the disease burden is morbidity).
Thanks for sharing. If roughly half of the benefits come from decreased mortality, I think the uncertainty of the effects on animals is high enough for the overall effect to be unclear (my view is informed by this BOTEC), i.e. I do not know whether the taxes would increase/decrease welfare.
For the fundamental question of whether it’s net positive to save lives given the animal suffering it causes—my own view from very rough CEAs + philosophical priors is that it’s probably net positive, but the uncertainty here is somewhere between high to impossible.
If you do not mind sharing, did you use Rethink’s median welfare ranges in your BOTECs? Since uncertainty is so high, would you also say that, upon further investigation, or with different assumptions from yours which are still reasonable, it is quite possible that one would conclude decreasing the disease burden of type 2 diabetes decreases welfare (accounting for humans and farmed animals)? If the intervention is not resiliently positive in terms of increasing welfare due to effects on farmed animals, would it make sense to flag these as a potential downside?
As a meta point, do you think there are better ways (than what I am doing here) of commenting about the effects on animals of global health interventions?
Thanks for sharing. If roughly half of the benefits come from decreased mortality, I think the uncertainty of the effects on animals is high enough for the overall effect to be unclear (my view is informed by this BOTEC), i.e. I do not know whether the taxes would increase/decrease welfare.
If you do not mind sharing, did you use Rethink’s median welfare ranges in your BOTECs? Since uncertainty is so high, would you also say that, upon further investigation, or with different assumptions from yours which are still reasonable, it is quite possible that one would conclude decreasing the disease burden of type 2 diabetes decreases welfare (accounting for humans and farmed animals)? If the intervention is not resiliently positive in terms of increasing welfare due to effects on farmed animals, would it make sense to flag these as a potential downside?
As a meta point, do you think there are better ways (than what I am doing here) of commenting about the effects on animals of global health interventions?