CDC and WHO downplayed the importance of masks and airborne transmission in the first few months of the pandemic despite evidence of airborne spread and promising data from other countries showing masks reduced transmission. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Face_masks_during_the_COVID-19_pandemic_in_the_United_States It took them over a year to officially acknowledge and recommend serious countermeasures to aerosol transmission, by which point we already had the vaccine.
There are a few ways EA could have helped 1) funding work 5-10 years ago to help public health organizations more quickly and accurately identify high risk viruses and disease vectors, 2) making sure there were a range of different professionals including aerosol scientists, engineers, and primary care providers on the key committees at public health organizations that gave official guidance, and 3) supporting a precautionary public health messaging blitz at the first evidence of aerosol transfer, before the strictest lockdown procedures were lifted.
Open Philanthropy is the primary (only?) major funder of biosecurity preparedness in the EA community, and gave ~$65 million to the cause area pre-pandemic, $20 million of which was to Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security (CHS) in September 2019 which in hindsight was very apt timing.
It’s hard to fix dysfunctional institutions by giving them more money. Even if you give them money with a clear purpose like “add the right experts to deciding bodies, they might screw up hiring people or do something else poorly.
I’m continually haunted by this wired article on the early WHO and CDC guidance on COVID:
https://www.wired.com/story/the-teeny-tiny-scientific-screwup-that-helped-covid-kill/
CDC and WHO downplayed the importance of masks and airborne transmission in the first few months of the pandemic despite evidence of airborne spread and promising data from other countries showing masks reduced transmission.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Face_masks_during_the_COVID-19_pandemic_in_the_United_States
It took them over a year to officially acknowledge and recommend serious countermeasures to aerosol transmission, by which point we already had the vaccine.
There are a few ways EA could have helped 1) funding work 5-10 years ago to help public health organizations more quickly and accurately identify high risk viruses and disease vectors, 2) making sure there were a range of different professionals including aerosol scientists, engineers, and primary care providers on the key committees at public health organizations that gave official guidance, and 3) supporting a precautionary public health messaging blitz at the first evidence of aerosol transfer, before the strictest lockdown procedures were lifted.
Open Philanthropy is the primary (only?) major funder of biosecurity preparedness in the EA community, and gave ~$65 million to the cause area pre-pandemic, $20 million of which was to Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security (CHS) in September 2019 which in hindsight was very apt timing.
It’s hard to fix dysfunctional institutions by giving them more money. Even if you give them money with a clear purpose like “add the right experts to deciding bodies, they might screw up hiring people or do something else poorly.