We already tried really really hard to reduce smoking in the US. I think all these curves, where effort is on the x axis and benefit on the y, see decreasing returns once you have already put in a lot of effort.
Another way of putting it: People I know who I advise to distance more and wear a mask more might disagree and argue with me, but they’ll at least consider my arguments and say why they’re right and engage. A person I know who smokes, who I advise to stop, will just laugh and blow me off: “whatever dude”. They’ve heard it before. So among people I know, “hey beware covid” is a way more effective message than “hey beware smoking”, so I barely ever bother with the latter.
But globally it is definitely false. For a trillion dollars, a fraction of he Covid economic loss so far, we could double the government budgets of the highest tobbacoo consuming countries (Egypt, Tanzania, Lebanon). The GoE would happily burn every tobacco farm in the country for a few billion dollars. The cost per life of paying Egypt to enact anti-smoking policy would inevitably be lower than Covid (not that its the most efficient cost per life).
So if we model Americans as rationally pursing QALY’s for other Americans, the difference is much less surprising. But that hides why we value the lives of our countrymen so much more than the lives of Egyptians.
Your comment also brings up the perspective of policy entrepreneurs. They can get policies amd behavior changes implemented much faster by talking about Covid than Tobacco in 2020. So a rational public health PE might say “I’d love to say a million people from Tobacco, but no one will listen to that policy. But I can save a smaller number by advocacy on Covid”.
We already tried really really hard to reduce smoking in the US. I think all these curves, where effort is on the x axis and benefit on the y, see decreasing returns once you have already put in a lot of effort.
Another way of putting it: People I know who I advise to distance more and wear a mask more might disagree and argue with me, but they’ll at least consider my arguments and say why they’re right and engage. A person I know who smokes, who I advise to stop, will just laugh and blow me off: “whatever dude”. They’ve heard it before. So among people I know, “hey beware covid” is a way more effective message than “hey beware smoking”, so I barely ever bother with the latter.
That’s fairly compelling in the US.
But globally it is definitely false. For a trillion dollars, a fraction of he Covid economic loss so far, we could double the government budgets of the highest tobbacoo consuming countries (Egypt, Tanzania, Lebanon). The GoE would happily burn every tobacco farm in the country for a few billion dollars. The cost per life of paying Egypt to enact anti-smoking policy would inevitably be lower than Covid (not that its the most efficient cost per life).
So if we model Americans as rationally pursing QALY’s for other Americans, the difference is much less surprising. But that hides why we value the lives of our countrymen so much more than the lives of Egyptians.
Your comment also brings up the perspective of policy entrepreneurs. They can get policies amd behavior changes implemented much faster by talking about Covid than Tobacco in 2020. So a rational public health PE might say “I’d love to say a million people from Tobacco, but no one will listen to that policy. But I can save a smaller number by advocacy on Covid”.
Those are good points.