“Sanity Check - Givewell’s New Incentives estimate seems optimistic” by NickLaing

TLDR: On a VERY rough Sanity check[1], GiveWell's New Incentives “lived saved” numbers seem perhaps twice as high as is plausible.

On seeing this wonderful graph from a GiveWell Back-check of New Incentives, I thought to myself wow New Incentives saved 27,000 lives - that's insane but feels quite high.

So I decided to spend a surprisingly fun 90 minutes of my life doing a sanity check of a back-check. The things I do for joy...

Due to the speedrun nature, I might have got a baisc input wrong, made a simple logical mistake or calculation error. Also note that even if New Incentives did only save half, or a quarter as many lives as GiveWell estimated, they would still be a very cost-effective charity!

My Sanity Check BOTEC[2]

I tried to estimate the upper end of what might be plausible, as this is only a [...]

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Outline:

(01:08) My Sanity Check BOTEC

(01:19) How Many kids did New Incentives cause to be vaccinated?

(01:49) What percent of those lives would be saved by Vaccination?

(03:55) We account for the remaining Mortality

(04:15) Now we estimate Vaccine preventable deaths from what's left.

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First published:

July 11th, 2025

Source:

https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/FxAtFMRnJZ2dbLBhA/sanity-check-givewell-s-new-incentives-estimate-seems

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

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