Are you thinking of EAs running this themselves? We already have an informal sense of what some top priorities are for action in biosafety/pandemic-preparedness going forwards (ramp up investment in vaccines and sterilizing technology, improve PPE, try to ban Gain of Function research, etc), even if this has never been tied together into a unified and rigorously prioritized framework.
I think the idea of a blue-ribbon panel on Covid failures could have huge impact if it had (in the best-case) official buy-in from government agencies like the CDC, or (failing that) at least something like “support from a couple prestigious universities” or “participation from a pair of senators that care about the issue” or “we don’t get the USA or UK but we do get a small European country like Portugal to do a Blue Ribbon Covid Panel”. In short, I think this idea might ideally look more like “lobby for the creation of an official Blue Ribbon Panel, and also try to contribute to it and influence it with EA research” rather than just running it entirely as an internal EA research project. But maybe I am wrong and a really good, comprehensive EA report could change a lot of minds.
It would be worth considering the right balance between putting resources toward conducting an original analysis vs. mustering the political will for implementing recommendations from retrospectives like those above.
Are you thinking of EAs running this themselves? We already have an informal sense of what some top priorities are for action in biosafety/pandemic-preparedness going forwards (ramp up investment in vaccines and sterilizing technology, improve PPE, try to ban Gain of Function research, etc), even if this has never been tied together into a unified and rigorously prioritized framework.
I think the idea of a blue-ribbon panel on Covid failures could have huge impact if it had (in the best-case) official buy-in from government agencies like the CDC, or (failing that) at least something like “support from a couple prestigious universities” or “participation from a pair of senators that care about the issue” or “we don’t get the USA or UK but we do get a small European country like Portugal to do a Blue Ribbon Covid Panel”. In short, I think this idea might ideally look more like “lobby for the creation of an official Blue Ribbon Panel, and also try to contribute to it and influence it with EA research” rather than just running it entirely as an internal EA research project. But maybe I am wrong and a really good, comprehensive EA report could change a lot of minds.
This is a great point. Also worth noting that there have been some retrospectives already, e.g. this one by the WHO: https://theindependentpanel.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/05/COVID-19-Make-it-the-Last-Pandemic_final.pdf
It would be worth considering the right balance between putting resources toward conducting an original analysis vs. mustering the political will for implementing recommendations from retrospectives like those above.