Prevention definitely helps. (It is a semantic question if you want to count prevention as a type of preparation or not)
I don’t think most people would consider prevention a type of preparation. EA-funded biorisk efforts presumably did not consider it that way. And more to the point, I do not want to lump prevention together with preparation because I am making an argument about preparation that is separate from prevention. So it’s not about just semantics, but precision on which efforts did well or poorly.
The idea that preparation (henceforth excluding prevention) helps is conventional wisdom and I think I would want to see good evidence against this to stop believing in this.
Conventional wisdom is worth little when it is the product of armchair speculation rather than experience. If people live through half a dozen pandemics and still have that conventional wisdom then we can have a different conversation.
On pandemics specifically the quick containment of SARs seems to be a success story (although I have not looked at how much preparation played a role it does seem to be a part of the story)
Wouldn’t preparation seem to be a part of the story of COVID-19 outcomes given a similarly superficial level of inquiry?
I agree but I think that designing systems that can make good decisions in a risk scenario is a form of preparation
Forget semantics. Did EA funding efforts and recipients design systems that made good decisions about COVID-19? Did anyone who talked about “pandemic preparation” pre-2020 use the term to encompass the design of systems like that?
A confusing factor that might make it hard to tell if preparation helped is that, based on the UK experience (eg discussed here) it appears that having bad plans in place may actually be worse than no plans.
Well you can’t just define preparation as “good plans”, that’s a no-true-Scotsman argument. If you have some way of ensuring that your preparation will be good preparation then it’s a different story.
Evidence from COVID does suggest to me that specific preparation does help. Notably countries (E Asia, Australasia) that had SARs and prepared for future SARs type outbreaks managed COIVD better.
That isn’t necessarily due to physical preparation, it could easily be intangible changes in the culture and political system, granting that there is in fact a causal connection as opposed to East Asia and Australasia just being better at this stuff.
iirc there was a study which found that American cities that lived through the Spanish Flu (1919) suffered less death early in the COVID19 outbreak. Cannot find the study now but if it’s really true then that would be hard to explain through preparation.
Does that seem like a good summary and sufficiently explain your findings.
I’m not sure exactly what anti-fragile means but that doesn’t sound right, decision systems in the US/UK for instance didn’t fall apart, they were just apathetic and unresponsive to good ideas just like they are for mundane problems that aren’t big crises. In other words they calmly kept operating the way they always do.
I don’t have reason to believe that there is a positive interaction between good leadership and good preparation. Maybe good preparation and good leadership act more as substitutes for each other rather than compliments.
Not sure it is useful to say ‘prevention helps’ since we cannot wish away viruses, we can only take measures to attempt to prevent viruses from emerging, and while those measures may be cost-effective it is a different conversation to which I have nothing to contribute.
I would summarize my view by saying that smart actions by government and civil society in the moment make the most difference, and if plans and preparation are to be helpful they will have to be done in careful ways to avoid the failures documented during COVID-19.
I don’t think most people would consider prevention a type of preparation. EA-funded biorisk efforts presumably did not consider it that way. And more to the point, I do not want to lump prevention together with preparation because I am making an argument about preparation that is separate from prevention. So it’s not about just semantics, but precision on which efforts did well or poorly.
I think it actually is common to include prevention under the umbrella of pandemic preparedness. for example, here’s the Council on Foreign Relation’s independent committee on Improving Pandemic Preparedness: “Based on the painful lessons of the current pandemic, the Task Force makes recommendations for improving U.S. and global capacities to deliver each of the three fundamentals of pandemic preparedness: prevention, detection, and response. ” Another example: https://www.path.org/articles/building-epidemic-preparedness-worldwide/
So it might be helpful to specify what you’re referring to by preparation.
I don’t think most people would consider prevention a type of preparation. EA-funded biorisk efforts presumably did not consider it that way. And more to the point, I do not want to lump prevention together with preparation because I am making an argument about preparation that is separate from prevention. So it’s not about just semantics, but precision on which efforts did well or poorly.
Conventional wisdom is worth little when it is the product of armchair speculation rather than experience. If people live through half a dozen pandemics and still have that conventional wisdom then we can have a different conversation.
Wouldn’t preparation seem to be a part of the story of COVID-19 outcomes given a similarly superficial level of inquiry?
Forget semantics. Did EA funding efforts and recipients design systems that made good decisions about COVID-19? Did anyone who talked about “pandemic preparation” pre-2020 use the term to encompass the design of systems like that?
Well you can’t just define preparation as “good plans”, that’s a no-true-Scotsman argument. If you have some way of ensuring that your preparation will be good preparation then it’s a different story.
That isn’t necessarily due to physical preparation, it could easily be intangible changes in the culture and political system, granting that there is in fact a causal connection as opposed to East Asia and Australasia just being better at this stuff.
iirc there was a study which found that American cities that lived through the Spanish Flu (1919) suffered less death early in the COVID19 outbreak. Cannot find the study now but if it’s really true then that would be hard to explain through preparation.
I’m not sure exactly what anti-fragile means but that doesn’t sound right, decision systems in the US/UK for instance didn’t fall apart, they were just apathetic and unresponsive to good ideas just like they are for mundane problems that aren’t big crises. In other words they calmly kept operating the way they always do.
I don’t have reason to believe that there is a positive interaction between good leadership and good preparation. Maybe good preparation and good leadership act more as substitutes for each other rather than compliments.
Not sure it is useful to say ‘prevention helps’ since we cannot wish away viruses, we can only take measures to attempt to prevent viruses from emerging, and while those measures may be cost-effective it is a different conversation to which I have nothing to contribute.
I would summarize my view by saying that smart actions by government and civil society in the moment make the most difference, and if plans and preparation are to be helpful they will have to be done in careful ways to avoid the failures documented during COVID-19.
I think it actually is common to include prevention under the umbrella of pandemic preparedness. for example, here’s the Council on Foreign Relation’s independent committee on Improving Pandemic Preparedness: “Based on the painful lessons of the current pandemic, the Task Force makes recommendations for improving U.S. and global capacities to deliver each of the three fundamentals of pandemic preparedness: prevention, detection, and response. ” Another example: https://www.path.org/articles/building-epidemic-preparedness-worldwide/
So it might be helpful to specify what you’re referring to by preparation.