Note: part of what impressed Scott here was being early to raise the alarm, and that boat has already sailed, so it could be that future COVID-19 work won’t do much to impress people like him.
I think that’s crucial—I’m generally supportive of EAs / rationalists to be doing things like COVID-19 work when they have a comparative advantage at doing so, which is a factor in why I support forecasting / meta work even now, and I’d certainly want biosecurity people to at least be thinking about how they could help with COVID-19 (as they in fact are). But the OP isn’t arguing that, and whether or not it was intended I could see readers thinking that they should be actively trying to work on COVID even if they don’t have an obvious comparative advantage at it, and that seems wrong to me.
This point about comparative advantage is also why I wrote:
I’d probably change my mind if I thought that these other longtermists could actually make a large impact on the COVID-19 response, but that seems quite unlikely to me.
I think that’s crucial—I’m generally supportive of EAs / rationalists to be doing things like COVID-19 work when they have a comparative advantage at doing so, which is a factor in why I support forecasting / meta work even now, and I’d certainly want biosecurity people to at least be thinking about how they could help with COVID-19 (as they in fact are). But the OP isn’t arguing that, and whether or not it was intended I could see readers thinking that they should be actively trying to work on COVID even if they don’t have an obvious comparative advantage at it, and that seems wrong to me.
This point about comparative advantage is also why I wrote: