Summary

• I Fermi estimate the cost-effectiveness of epidemic/pandemic preparedness is 0.00236 DALY/$.
• Relative to the above, I calculate GiveWell’s top charities are 4.12 times as cost-effective, and corporate campaigns for chicken welfare, such as the ones supported by The Humane League (THL), 6.35 k times.

Calculations

My calculations are in this Sheet.

I Fermi estimate the cost-effectiveness of epidemic/pandemic preparedness of 0.00236 DALY/$ multiplying:

• The expected annual epidemic/pandemic disease burden of 68.2 MDALY. I obtained this from the product between:
  • The expected annual epidemic/pandemic deaths of 1.61 M, which I determined multiplying:

    • The epidemic/pandemic deaths per human-year from 1500 to 2023 of 1.98*10^-4, which is the ratio between 160 M epidemic/pandemic deaths, and 808 G human-years from Marani et. al 2021^[1].

    • The population predicted for 2024 of 8.12 G.
  • The disease burden per death in 2021 of 42.4 DALY.
• The relative reduction of the expected annual epidemic/pandemic disease burden per annual cost of 3.46 %/G$. I got this aggregating the following estimates with the geometric mean:
  • 8 %/G$ (= 0.2/(250*10^9/100)), which is based on Millett & Snyder-Beattie 2017:
    • “We extend the World Bank's assumptions to include bioterrorism and biowarfare—that is, we assume that the healthcare infrastructure would reduce bioterrorism and biowarfare fatalities by 20%”.
    • “We calculate that purchasing 1 century's worth of global protection in this form would cost on the order of $250 billion, assuming that subsequent maintenance costs are lower but that the entire system needs intermittent upgrading”.
  • 1.5 %/G$ (= 0.3/(20*10^9)), which is based on Bernstein et. al 2022:
    • 30 % is the mean between 10 % and 50 %, which are the values studied in Table 2.
    • “We find that the sum of our median cost estimates of primary prevention (~$20 billion) are ~1/20 of the low-end annualized value of lives lost to emerging viral zoonoses and <1/10 of the annualized economic losses”.

Relative to epidemic/pandemic preparedness, I calculate:

• GiveWell’s top charities are 4.21 (= 0.00994/0.00236) times as cost-effective.
• Corporate campaigns for chicken welfare, such as the ones supported by THL, are 6.35 k (= 15.0/0.00236) times as cost-effective.

1. ^{^} 1 G stands for 1 billion. I assumed 5 k deaths (= (0 + 10)/2*10^3) for epidemics/pandemics qualitatively inferred (said) to have caused less than 10 k deaths, which are coded as having caused -999 (0) deaths. I also considered the deaths from COVID-19, which is not in the original dataset.