Thanks, great analysis! Just registering that I still expect bio risk will be less neglected than in the past. The major consideration for me is institutional funding, due to its scale. Like you say:
We believe that an issue of the magnitude of COVID-19 will likely not be forgotten soon, and that funding for pandemic preparedness will likely be safe for much longer than in the aftermath of previous pandemics. In particular it may persist long enough to become institutionalised and therefore harder to cut.
Aside from future institutional funding, we also have to take the into account the current funding and new experience because they contribute to our cumulative knowledge and preparedness.
Thanks Soeren, this is a useful point to help to tease out the thinking more clearly:
Agree that major institutions/governments will invest better in pandemic preparedness for some (unknown) number of years from now (better than recently, anyway)
Also expect that this work will be inadequate, by (for example) overindexing/overfitting on what’s happened before (flu with fatality rate of 2.5% or less, or another coronavirus), but not anticipating other possible pandemics (Nipah, Hendra, or man-made)
If you had asked me in (say) early April, I would have guessed that major institutions will get more funding, and that NGOs who are better at considering tail risks and x-risks and tackling these overfitting errors will also get more funding.
We now think that those major institutions will get more funding, but that the more existential-risk-focused NGOs aren’t getting materially more funding, at the moment
Makes sense. I guess then the question is if the work of everyone except the x-risk focused NGOs helps reduce r x-risk much. I tend to think yes since much of pandemic preparedness also addresses the worst case scenarios. But that seems to be an open question.
Thanks, great analysis! Just registering that I still expect bio risk will be less neglected than in the past. The major consideration for me is institutional funding, due to its scale. Like you say:
Aside from future institutional funding, we also have to take the into account the current funding and new experience because they contribute to our cumulative knowledge and preparedness.
Thanks Soeren, this is a useful point to help to tease out the thinking more clearly:
Agree that major institutions/governments will invest better in pandemic preparedness for some (unknown) number of years from now (better than recently, anyway)
Also expect that this work will be inadequate, by (for example) overindexing/overfitting on what’s happened before (flu with fatality rate of 2.5% or less, or another coronavirus), but not anticipating other possible pandemics (Nipah, Hendra, or man-made)
If you had asked me in (say) early April, I would have guessed that major institutions will get more funding, and that NGOs who are better at considering tail risks and x-risks and tackling these overfitting errors will also get more funding.
We now think that those major institutions will get more funding, but that the more existential-risk-focused NGOs aren’t getting materially more funding, at the moment
Makes sense. I guess then the question is if the work of everyone except the x-risk focused NGOs helps reduce r x-risk much. I tend to think yes since much of pandemic preparedness also addresses the worst case scenarios. But that seems to be an open question.