Thanks for the good post, and raising a critically important issue. I absolutely recognise the individual disconnect between awareness and action at the beginning of the COVID pandemic, and think posts like this one are a good way to avoid this. Some things to think about:
I think Zeynep should be held in good regard as a source. I found her reporting throughout the COVID pandemic to be consistently excellent, readable, and epistemically robust.
The spread in the mink farm is another case where humanity’s collective disregard for animals turns out to be collectively harmful, just like the wet markets in Wuhan. This seems to be a case where different EA branches are converging on a single clear policy direction. Seems like this could be a case where EA might be able to make policy progress in the wake of a near-miss event?
Even if the likelihood of this becoming a pandemic remains low, are governments reacting proportionally to the risk? Maybe they can’t/​don’t want to say so publicly, but given the slow response to COVID my prior is that they’re much more likely to be reactive rather than proactive.
Thanks for the good post, and raising a critically important issue. I absolutely recognise the individual disconnect between awareness and action at the beginning of the COVID pandemic, and think posts like this one are a good way to avoid this. Some things to think about:
I think Zeynep should be held in good regard as a source. I found her reporting throughout the COVID pandemic to be consistently excellent, readable, and epistemically robust.
The spread in the mink farm is another case where humanity’s collective disregard for animals turns out to be collectively harmful, just like the wet markets in Wuhan. This seems to be a case where different EA branches are converging on a single clear policy direction. Seems like this could be a case where EA might be able to make policy progress in the wake of a near-miss event?
Even if the likelihood of this becoming a pandemic remains low, are governments reacting proportionally to the risk? Maybe they can’t/​don’t want to say so publicly, but given the slow response to COVID my prior is that they’re much more likely to be reactive rather than proactive.