GV/OP donated large amounts to pandemic preparedness before 2020, but the rest of the EA community did not. When I looked at LTFF grants in December 2020, I found 5 grants for $114k for pandemics (by comparison, AI had received ~19x more money). If you download GWWC’s list of reported donations (which includes post-2020 data), the only dedicated biosecurity organizations in the top 100 are Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security (#58, 17 donors giving $257k) and Telis Bioscience (1 donor giving $250k, and FWIW I’m pretty sure this isn’t nonprofit). That’s $507k combined, less than half of a percent of the total given to the top 100 organizations.
My impression is that the EA community talked a lot about pandemics prior to Covid, and made them a relatively high priority in career advice. But aside from GV/OP, I haven’t seen evidence of sizeable donations. So my generally sense is (non-GV/OP) EAs are too quick to take credit for being ahead of the curve in this area, at least with respect to money (which I think is a good indicator of actual priorities).
GV/OP donated large amounts to pandemic preparedness before 2020, but the rest of the EA community did not. When I looked at LTFF grants in December 2020, I found 5 grants for $114k for pandemics (by comparison, AI had received ~19x more money). If you download GWWC’s list of reported donations (which includes post-2020 data), the only dedicated biosecurity organizations in the top 100 are Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security (#58, 17 donors giving $257k) and Telis Bioscience (1 donor giving $250k, and FWIW I’m pretty sure this isn’t nonprofit). That’s $507k combined, less than half of a percent of the total given to the top 100 organizations.
My impression is that the EA community talked a lot about pandemics prior to Covid, and made them a relatively high priority in career advice. But aside from GV/OP, I haven’t seen evidence of sizeable donations. So my generally sense is (non-GV/OP) EAs are too quick to take credit for being ahead of the curve in this area, at least with respect to money (which I think is a good indicator of actual priorities).
You make some extremely good points. I’m not sure off the top of my head when I’ll have time to respond with the care your doesn’t