"Rethink HIV" selected among the Best Books of 2012 on Africa, ranked by Foreign Affairs Magazine

COPENHAGEN – West Africa’s Ebola epidemic has dominated headlines for much of the last year. But, as devastating as that outbreak has been, its death toll of less than 20,000 people is dwarfed by that of preventable diseases such as AIDS, tuberculosis, and malaria, which together caused more than three million deaths in 2013, hitting the world’s poorest people the hardest. This need not be the case; indeed, addressing these diseases would be an extraordinarily good investment. 

Bjorn Lomberg (BL): The UN, with its 2015-2030 process, is going to set the global goals for the next 15 years in September, following the success of the Millennium Development Goals. Since these could end up determining a large part of the period's $2.5 trillion development aid, it is important we pick targets more effectively. The Copenhagen Consensus has engaged in a project to determine which targets will deliver the most good per dollar spent.

Across the world, countries have imposed social distancing regulations to avoid overwhelming the health care capacity during the coronavirus pandemic — the so-called “flatten the curve”. Such a policy can make a lot of sense.

The first peer-reviewed cost-benefit analysis of the US shows just that. It looks at moderate social distancing, an approach similar to Sweden’s. Here, social interaction is reduced about 40 per cent, allowing schools and work to stay open but dramatically reducing contacts in all other public areas.