Containing a potential pandemic is extremely high-impact. If a high proportion of people regularly wore PPE, this could make the difference in determining whether or not the outbreak is stopped before it becomes a pandemic. Regularly wearing masks is much more doable than regularly wearing hazmat suits, although the political polarization of masks in certain countries is a barrier. Even so, preventing a fraction of future pandemics (which can on expectation be achieved by regular mask-wearing in a fraction of the world’s countries) is still quite high impact. Applying the theory of social norms and of prestige may help normalize the regular wear of PPE. Convincing and publicizing prestigious individuals’ regular mask-wearing and associating regular mask-wearing to morality may potentially be helpful on this front (in America, this may only work in certain types of communities) .
Normalizing regular wear of PPE
Biorisk
Containing a potential pandemic is extremely high-impact. If a high proportion of people regularly wore PPE, this could make the difference in determining whether or not the outbreak is stopped before it becomes a pandemic. Regularly wearing masks is much more doable than regularly wearing hazmat suits, although the political polarization of masks in certain countries is a barrier. Even so, preventing a fraction of future pandemics (which can on expectation be achieved by regular mask-wearing in a fraction of the world’s countries) is still quite high impact. Applying the theory of social norms and of prestige may help normalize the regular wear of PPE. Convincing and publicizing prestigious individuals’ regular mask-wearing and associating regular mask-wearing to morality may potentially be helpful on this front (in America, this may only work in certain types of communities) .