Thank you for this excellent post and analysis Ian—I’ve been working on the pandemic since January and still learned a lot.
1. This “crisis” seems to me a huge opportunity for changes in how we do education. I’d love to see posts on that, or does someone have links?
2. I think working on covid could more broadly help with preparedness for cascading risks, GCR and Xrisk. Sahil Shah at ALLFED.info is learning and doing a lot on this, with FAO, WFP and others, but it would be great to see metta level work also, pulling out lessons learned from an actual response, which is a rare opportunity.
One useful thing could be to itemise and appreciate and learn from institutions, individuals and media that have done 1 or more really useful thing during the pandemic, because the chances are they would be good for the next pandemic, GCR or Xrisk event too?
3. I had great support here in India from Katriel Friedman and Fiona Conlon and team at Charity Science (Health). They are well-networked and could be worth funding in themselves, as could ALLFED (I’m biased!) and Indian animal charities (ask EA Aditya SK for suggestions) as could the Indian EA network itself: Varun Deshpande has been working up a competent proposal which I think is ready for funding: a small amount could make a. huge difference and be really encouraging and fertile. I also see a huge need for an Asian 80,000hours, and I’m supporting 2 universities who want a Foresight/Futures/Xrisk institute. The pandemic is making it very easy to see the need!
4. Lessons learned, but not implemented. For example, how come lots of countries including UK derived lessons learned from SARS-1, but only a few actually implemented those lessons (e.g. HK, Korea)?
In India, having 50kg of food vouchers ready and printed in every large city (+ some preparedness and training exercises) would have enabled a more subtle lockdown to happen without disrupting food supply (and causing lots of involuntary migration, with much suffering and death) and the cost would have been tiny.
Are there high leverage things we could do now, as we propose projects for funding, that could action the lessons learned more robustly and lastingly?
Should we be aiming more towards corporations and institutes, city regions and central banks than governments, who can “forget” or reverse or unfund preparedness when it becomes old news?
Is there a science of preparedness/recovery finance and preparedness nudge? Should it be part of the emerging fields of resilience and scaling/implementation science?
or should recovery be its own field, as it’s always going to be the most neglected “last part” of any broader field such as resilience or DRR disaster risk reduction?
Obviously preparedness and recovery is core work for ALLFED.info(interest: I cofounded). Sahil Shah is leading the work on cascading risks and financial mechanisms and direct support to Ethiopia and Tanzania, with support from myself, Sonia Cassidy (director of operations in London) and Prof David Denkenberger, EA and philanthropist.
5. At the moment it’s very hard for any country to mount a humanitarian response to the next hurricane/cyclone—how can you put hundreds of people onto a ship or train and send. them into a disaster zone, where they could infect or be infected, and all the ICUs are flooded?
An obvious solution would be to do the safest possible Challenge Trial, and if I was a young Red Cross worker I would absolutely want to volunteer, for my own safety. The blockage is the wariness of doctors, who tend to consider only the narrow risk to the persons they treat, and not the broader consequences of no action (a variant on trolley problem, but with much. bigger consequences for no action). So I think there is an important legal/ethical issue around Challenge Trials, and probably a need for a new or adapted and faster ethical approval process, enabling proposals like those from Robin Hanson/Pete Singer/vaccinologists/C-TIG googlegroup to happen. At the moment there are too many restrictions/blocks which mean only high risk unofficial routes are available, and no competent research/tracking/publishing gets done, so we don’t learn whether Challenge Trials have a safe protocol or not, and can’t go to scale. Matthjis Maas in Copenhagen Law centre has worked on cascading scenarios (which he calls “boring apocalypse”) so he might be a good collaborator, especially as neighbouring Sweden is, in effect, doing a wild and risky national Challenge Trial, with the virus itself. This is a bit dense and deserves a thread of it’s own, with 3 authors—of someone is interested, please message Dr Aaron Stupple or Robin Hanson.
Hi Ray, thanks for these reflections and ideas. In response to your first question, I know someone working with EdTech Hub on this issue. You can find their COVID-19 response here.
Thank you for this excellent post and analysis Ian—I’ve been working on the pandemic since January and still learned a lot.
1. This “crisis” seems to me a huge opportunity for changes in how we do education. I’d love to see posts on that, or does someone have links?
2. I think working on covid could more broadly help with preparedness for cascading risks, GCR and Xrisk. Sahil Shah at ALLFED.info is learning and doing a lot on this, with FAO, WFP and others, but it would be great to see metta level work also, pulling out lessons learned from an actual response, which is a rare opportunity.
One useful thing could be to itemise and appreciate and learn from institutions, individuals and media that have done 1 or more really useful thing during the pandemic, because the chances are they would be good for the next pandemic, GCR or Xrisk event too?
3. I had great support here in India from Katriel Friedman and Fiona Conlon and team at Charity Science (Health). They are well-networked and could be worth funding in themselves, as could ALLFED (I’m biased!) and Indian animal charities (ask EA Aditya SK for suggestions) as could the Indian EA network itself: Varun Deshpande has been working up a competent proposal which I think is ready for funding: a small amount could make a. huge difference and be really encouraging and fertile. I also see a huge need for an Asian 80,000hours, and I’m supporting 2 universities who want a Foresight/Futures/Xrisk institute. The pandemic is making it very easy to see the need!
4. Lessons learned, but not implemented. For example, how come lots of countries including UK derived lessons learned from SARS-1, but only a few actually implemented those lessons (e.g. HK, Korea)?
In India, having 50kg of food vouchers ready and printed in every large city (+ some preparedness and training exercises) would have enabled a more subtle lockdown to happen without disrupting food supply (and causing lots of involuntary migration, with much suffering and death) and the cost would have been tiny.
Obviously preparedness and recovery is core work for ALLFED.info (interest: I cofounded). Sahil Shah is leading the work on cascading risks and financial mechanisms and direct support to Ethiopia and Tanzania, with support from myself, Sonia Cassidy (director of operations in London) and Prof David Denkenberger, EA and philanthropist.
5. At the moment it’s very hard for any country to mount a humanitarian response to the next hurricane/cyclone—how can you put hundreds of people onto a ship or train and send. them into a disaster zone, where they could infect or be infected, and all the ICUs are flooded?
An obvious solution would be to do the safest possible Challenge Trial, and if I was a young Red Cross worker I would absolutely want to volunteer, for my own safety. The blockage is the wariness of doctors, who tend to consider only the narrow risk to the persons they treat, and not the broader consequences of no action (a variant on trolley problem, but with much. bigger consequences for no action). So I think there is an important legal/ethical issue around Challenge Trials, and probably a need for a new or adapted and faster ethical approval process, enabling proposals like those from Robin Hanson/Pete Singer/vaccinologists/C-TIG googlegroup to happen. At the moment there are too many restrictions/blocks which mean only high risk unofficial routes are available, and no competent research/tracking/publishing gets done, so we don’t learn whether Challenge Trials have a safe protocol or not, and can’t go to scale. Matthjis Maas in Copenhagen Law centre has worked on cascading scenarios (which he calls “boring apocalypse”) so he might be a good collaborator, especially as neighbouring Sweden is, in effect, doing a wild and risky national Challenge Trial, with the virus itself. This is a bit dense and deserves a thread of it’s own, with 3 authors—of someone is interested, please message Dr Aaron Stupple or Robin Hanson.
If anyone wants to reach me about any of this, WhatsApp +447765477305 while I’m in India and messages to www.facebook.com/andyraytaylor are robust, otherwise via www.ALLFED.info.
I’d also love a volunteer or three to run a crowdfunder?
Hi Ray, thanks for these reflections and ideas. In response to your first question, I know someone working with EdTech Hub on this issue. You can find their COVID-19 response here.