A benefit-cost analysis of different response scenarios to COVID-19: A case study.

BACKGROUND: This paper compares the direct benefits to the State of Western Australia from employing a "suppression" policy response to the COVID-19 pandemic rather than a "herd immunity" approach. METHODS: An S-I-R (susceptible-infectious-resolved) model is used to estimate the likely benefits of a suppression COVID-19 response compared to a herd immunity alternative. Direct impacts of the virus are calculated on the basis of sick leave, hospitalizations, and fatalities, while indirect impacts related to response actions are excluded. RESULTS: Preliminary modeling indicates that approximately 1700 vulnerable person deaths are likely to have been prevented over 1 year from adopting a suppression response rather than a herd immunity response, and approximately 4500 hospitalizations. These benefits are valued at around AUD4.7 billion. If a do nothing policy had been adopted, the number of people in need of hospitalization is likely to have overwhelmed the hospital system within 50 days of the virus being introduced. Maximum hospital capacity is unlikely to be reached in either a suppression policy or a herd immunity policy. CONCLUSION: Using early international estimates to represent the negative impact each type of policy response is likely to have on gross state product, results suggest the benefit-cost ratio for the suppression policy is slightly higher than that of the herd immunity policy, but both benefit-cost ratios are less than one.

Investigating some of the factors that influence "consumer" choice when adopting a shelter dog in the United kingdom.

This study examined which characteristics of dogs available at a large rehoming organization in the United Kingdom influenced prospective adopters' choices. The revealed preference data used to model "consumer" choice were from the Dogs Trust rehoming web pages. The analysis of the probability of adoption involved a logistic regression model with multiple imputation. The factors that had a significant impact on the adopters' choices were age, size, pedigree status, coat length, behavior (e.g., fearfulness, adjustment issues), friendliness (toward children, dogs, and other pets), and training. This study offers a quantitative analysis of adopters' preferences that could prove to be useful for shelter personnel and researchers interested in the analysis of companion animal markets.

Biosecurity and yield improvement technologies are strategic complements in the fight against food insecurity.

The delivery of food security via continued crop yield improvement alone is not an effective food security strategy, and must be supported by pre- and post-border biosecurity policies to guard against perverse outcomes. In the wake of the green revolution, yield gains have been in steady decline, while post-harvest crop losses have increased as a result of insufficiently resourced and uncoordinated efforts to control spoilage throughout global transport and storage networks. This paper focuses on the role that biosecurity is set to play in future food security by preventing both pre- and post-harvest losses, thereby protecting crop yield. We model biosecurity as a food security technology that may complement conventional yield improvement policies if the gains in global farm profits are sufficient to offset the costs of implementation and maintenance. Using phytosanitary measures that slow global spread of the Ug99 strain of wheat stem rust as an example of pre-border biosecurity risk mitigation and combining it with post-border surveillance and invasive alien species control efforts, we estimate global farm profitability may be improved by over US$4.5 billion per annum.