Just wanted to thank you and NickLaing for this exchange. I’m planning to use an adapted version of the thoughts/considerations as an example of estimating expected value in some resources I’m creating!
Working on a new, more effective TB vaccine: Cost per life saved?
About 50% of phase 3 trials are successful. So 50% chance of the rollout being possible
Being conservative on The Economist’s optimistic estimate of 10 million lives saved, let’s reduce it to [BLANK 1].
So 0.5 (probability) x [BLANK 1] (lives saved) = [BLANK 2] lives saved in expectation.
The trial is $550 million to open up this opportunity, then let’s estimate vaccine production and distribution costs $5 per person.
There are about 7 times as many TB cases as deaths, but the vaccine is maximum about 50% effective, and they’ll have to vaccinate way more people than currently actually get TB. So let’s guess that they need to vaccinate [BLANK 3] people to save the [BLANK 1] lives
[BLANK 3] million x $5 = $[BLANK 4] in distribution costs.
Just wanted to thank you and NickLaing for this exchange. I’m planning to use an adapted version of the thoughts/considerations as an example of estimating expected value in some resources I’m creating!
Working on a new, more effective TB vaccine: Cost per life saved?
About 50% of phase 3 trials are successful. So 50% chance of the rollout being possible
Being conservative on The Economist’s optimistic estimate of 10 million lives saved, let’s reduce it to [BLANK 1].
So 0.5 (probability) x [BLANK 1] (lives saved) = [BLANK 2] lives saved in expectation.
The trial is $550 million to open up this opportunity, then let’s estimate vaccine production and distribution costs $5 per person.
There are about 7 times as many TB cases as deaths, but the vaccine is maximum about 50% effective, and they’ll have to vaccinate way more people than currently actually get TB. So let’s guess that they need to vaccinate [BLANK 3] people to save the [BLANK 1] lives
[BLANK 3] million x $5 = $[BLANK 4] in distribution costs.
$0.55 billion (trial costs) + $[BLANK 4] (distribution costs) = $[BLANK 5]
$[BLANK 5] (cost) / [BLANK 2] (lives saved in expectation) = $[BLANK 6] per life saved in expectation