I think that the Fermi estimate is a good start, but I am more suspicious that it might be a substantial underestimate of the cost-effectiveness.
The strongest case for the Ebola outbreak to be an outstanding giving opportunity seems to be that the outbreak might grow a long way, and intervening now could be an easy way to help containment and give outside agencies enough time to get a proper plan into action.
Perhaps there’s a story where we’re on route to discover a cure or vaccine, but we’ll hit 1 million deaths (say) before this happens, and it will still be on its exponential growth curve at that stage. Then it might be pretty cheap to slow the whole thing down by 1% today, but that could translate to 10,000 fewer deaths at the point where the cure or vaccine comes in.
I don’t really think that story has high likelihood, particularly as perturbations can lessen its impact—if Ebola spreads slower today, perhaps that will also slow down the efforts of people who would eventually deal with it; or if it’s no longer in exponential growth phase when we get a solution then the effect will be much smaller. But this looks like a scenario where the tail benefit could dominate, so I’d want to take the possibility seriously if looking at this.
If this is correct then early interventions could be quite a bit better (in expectation) than later ones. My best guess right now is that it’s still not good enough to target, though.
I think that the Fermi estimate is a good start, but I am more suspicious that it might be a substantial underestimate of the cost-effectiveness.
The strongest case for the Ebola outbreak to be an outstanding giving opportunity seems to be that the outbreak might grow a long way, and intervening now could be an easy way to help containment and give outside agencies enough time to get a proper plan into action.
Perhaps there’s a story where we’re on route to discover a cure or vaccine, but we’ll hit 1 million deaths (say) before this happens, and it will still be on its exponential growth curve at that stage. Then it might be pretty cheap to slow the whole thing down by 1% today, but that could translate to 10,000 fewer deaths at the point where the cure or vaccine comes in.
I don’t really think that story has high likelihood, particularly as perturbations can lessen its impact—if Ebola spreads slower today, perhaps that will also slow down the efforts of people who would eventually deal with it; or if it’s no longer in exponential growth phase when we get a solution then the effect will be much smaller. But this looks like a scenario where the tail benefit could dominate, so I’d want to take the possibility seriously if looking at this.
If this is correct then early interventions could be quite a bit better (in expectation) than later ones. My best guess right now is that it’s still not good enough to target, though.