Coronavirus has claimed the lives of over half a million people worldwide and this death toll continues to rise rapidly each day. In the absence of a vaccine, non-clinical preventative measures have been implemented as the principal means of limiting deaths. However, these measures have caused unprecedented disruption to daily lives and economic activity. Given this developing crisis, the potential for a second wave of infections and the near certainty of future pandemics, lessons need to be rapidly gleaned from the available data. We address the challenges of crosscountry comparisons by allowing for differences in reporting and variation in underlying socioeconomic conditions between countries. Our analyses show that, to date, differences in policy interventions have outweighed socioeconomic variation in explaining the range of death rates observed in the data. Our epidemiological models show that across 8 countries a further week long delay in imposing lockdown would likely have cost more than half a million lives. Furthermore, those countries which acted more promptly saved substantially more lives than those that delayed. Linking decisions over the timing of lockdown and consequent deaths to economic data, we reveal the costs that national governments were implicitly prepared to pay to protect their citizens as reflected in the economic activity foregone to save lives. These 'price of life' estimates vary enormously between countries, ranging from as low as around $100,000 (e.g. the UK, US and Italy) to in excess of $1million (e.g. Denmark, Germany, New Zealand and Korea). The lowest estimates are further reduced once we correct for under-reporting of Covid-19 deaths.

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1. Two solutions, at opposite ends of a continuum, have been proposed to limit negative impacts of human agricultural demand on biodiversity. Under land sharing, farmed landscapes are made as beneficial to wild species as possible, usually at the cost of lower yields. Under land sparing, yields are maximised and land not needed for farming is spared for nature. Multiple empirical studies have concluded that land-sparing strategies would be the least detrimental to wild species, provided the land not needed for agriculture is actually spared for nature. However, the possibility of imperfections in the delivery of land sparing has not been comprehensively considered.2. Land sparing can be imperfect in two main ways: land not required for food production may not be used for conservation (incomplete area sparing), and habitat spared may be of lower quality than that assessed in surveys (lower habitat quality sparing). Here we use published data relating population density to landscapelevel yield for birds and trees in Ghana (167 and 220 species respectively) and India (174 birds, 40 trees) to assess effects of imperfect land sparing on regionwide population sizes and hence population viabilities.3. We find that incomplete area and lower habitat quality imperfections both reduce the benefits of a land-sparing strategy. However, sparing still outperforms sharing whenever ≥28% of land that could be spared is devoted to conservation, or the quality of land spared is ≥29% of the value of that surveyed. Thresholds are even lower under alternative assumptions of how population viability relates to population size and for species with small global ranges, and remain low even when both imperfections co-occur. 4. Comparison of these thresholds with empirical data on the likely real-world performance of land sparing suggests that reducing imperfections in its delivery would be highly beneficial. Nevertheless, given plausible relationships between population size and population viability, land sparing outperforms land sharing despite its imperfections. Policy implications.Our results confirm that real-world difficulties in implementing land sparing will have significant impacts on biodiversity. They also underscore the need for strategies which explicitly link yield increases to setting land aside for conservation,

what is meant by big data. Huge amounts? A colossal amount of funding associated with it? Hypothesis-driven or investigative research by small groups is important but so is collaboration. Multidisciplinary research requires collaboration. What do you think are some of the problems faced by science today?Funding and recruitment are always issues. Directed funding opportunities in current fads or hot topics that reduce funding for other science areas. Ignorance and short-termism from politicians who only think of science if it fi ts their policies and does not harm their re-election. Actual antagonism to science and scientists, and disrespect for experts from certain world leaders and politicians. Brexit. Political interference and censorship. Expanding centralisation and administrative bureaucracy within institutions. Lack of public awareness or appreciation of science and scientists. Plagiarists, copiers and cheats. Religious fundamentalists and creationists. 'New Age' philosophies, crystal therapy, spiritualism, astrology and anti-science social media posts. Pseudoscience in product advertising. Fake and predatory journals, fake conference and journal invitations and yet more new journals. Probably there are a few more that I have not included. What do you think of the postpublication peer review of papers?Ridiculous, pointless and illogical for such obvious reasons that I don't need to state to an educated readership. Do you support open-access publication?There are pros and cons. Of course we want science to be unrestricted and accessible to all. However, open access is not open at all as there is a cost, not feasible for some, and someone has to pay, usually the tax payer. This contributes even more to the rivers of income for increasingly powerful publishers who rely on a global army of unpaid researchers to write, review and edit the papers, solicit articles and edit the journals. Nice system. I wonder who thought of it?