I think, in this type of analysis, for an infectious disease, it’s really important to look at potential for spread as well.
Malaria is region-constricted (only places with the right mosquitoes), whereas HIV is not. Therefore, there’s a natural cap at the amount of malaria we can have if malaria control ceased to exist, whereas HIV’s ‘natural cap’ is potentially “all susceptible humans”.
If you include “all future infections” into the analysis, how much suffering due to HIV can be avoided due to current efforts to control HIV?
I mean, you can sort of see this in a natural experiment created by South Africa’s HIV denialism − 18.5% of the population there is infected, compared to 6% of Kenya and 3% of Nigeria, despite both Kenya and Nigeria having lower GDP/capita than South Africa. There’s an article on the costs of HIV denialism in SA here. Obviously, societal dynamics are different in SA than other places, but 3x the amount of HIV is a pretty significant number.
Anyway, the CBAs on interventions like promoting condom use, testing services, education campaigns, and such are (obviously) difficult to do, but that… really doesn’t mean we shouldn’t be funding them.
As for agony of HIV over malaria—are you sure? Does this include the ‘psychic’ cost of HIV (mental stress, stigma, constrained social mobility, shunning from society/friends/family) along with the physical cost?
I think, in this type of analysis, for an infectious disease, it’s really important to look at potential for spread as well.
Malaria is region-constricted (only places with the right mosquitoes), whereas HIV is not. Therefore, there’s a natural cap at the amount of malaria we can have if malaria control ceased to exist, whereas HIV’s ‘natural cap’ is potentially “all susceptible humans”.
If you include “all future infections” into the analysis, how much suffering due to HIV can be avoided due to current efforts to control HIV? I mean, you can sort of see this in a natural experiment created by South Africa’s HIV denialism − 18.5% of the population there is infected, compared to 6% of Kenya and 3% of Nigeria, despite both Kenya and Nigeria having lower GDP/capita than South Africa. There’s an article on the costs of HIV denialism in SA here. Obviously, societal dynamics are different in SA than other places, but 3x the amount of HIV is a pretty significant number.
Anyway, the CBAs on interventions like promoting condom use, testing services, education campaigns, and such are (obviously) difficult to do, but that… really doesn’t mean we shouldn’t be funding them.
As for agony of HIV over malaria—are you sure? Does this include the ‘psychic’ cost of HIV (mental stress, stigma, constrained social mobility, shunning from society/friends/family) along with the physical cost?