My best guess is no, but feel like I should throw this question out there in case anyone can think of plausible candidates. Most of the advice is targeted to large donors in EA on the assumption that Open Phil, etc is ~40% likely to come across this thread, rather than for scrub small-scale donors like me.
Some possibilities I could think about:
1. Buy testing kits from South Korea/Chinese manufacturers and partner with biohackers/nonprofit groups/homeless shelters/senior homes/other at-risk places to administer them ahead of hospital systems. Understand that you probably can not legally call them COVID-19 tests, but still do this type of guerilla testing quickly and provide necessary quarantine guidelines/supplies later/
2. Fund a large prize for the best #AlternativeVentillator design that balances cost, ease of construction, and quality.
3. Buy ads on New York Times/Fox News etc (and other local equivalents in other countries), to make #flattenthecurve messaging more well-known among people who aren’t aggressively online.
4. Prepare and be ready to buy ads on local communities that just got evidence of an outbreak and suggest emergency measures (we may be able to race a few days ahead of public health authorities in acting very fast this way).
(One way to race ahead is to bid a lot for heavily targeted Google and FB ads).
5. Fund vaccine projects (though it looks like a lot of projects are already underway and dumb money might make this situation worse).
6. Fund a large prize for aggressive/fast/cheap testing, potentially to be used in the developing world.
7. Assume Bill Gates knows what he’s doing here and throw money at whatever the Gates Foundation throws money at (assuming they have similar policies like Open Phil and don’t want to account for 100% of funding for most projects).
8. Buy a lot of masks and distribute it to at-risk populations.
9. Fund studies for various airport interventions.
10. Give a grant or fund a prize for a high-quality no-contact thermometer for humans, to be used at airports, conferences and other places.
Thoughts on additional suggestions? Would especially appreciate ones that have cost-benefit estimates/guesstimates tacked on (would also be excited if someone can formalize any of my loose suggestions into solid cost-benefit guesstimates).
Addendum: Also excited to learn of existing/shovel-ready projects and nonprofits that EAs can fund, not just new projects. However, for those I’d appreciate a specific summary and cost-effectiveness estimate attached (otherwise we’ll see a lot of answers that are just stuff like “The Red Cross”).
A large donor working with DMI to scale up messaging around handwashing seems like an obvious place to start given that they are plausibly close to that level of cost-effectiveness even ignoring coronavirus, and under optimistic assumptions are significantly better than that.
It looks like DFID have funded a similar intervention today.
https://www.gov.uk/government/news/uk-aid-to-tackle-global-spread-of-coronavirus-fake-news
“Dangerous myths about coronavirus which are hampering the global fight against the disease will be challenged thanks to a new initiative backed by UK aid.
The support from the Department for International Development will challenge misinformation in South East Asia and Africa, which is then spreading worldwide, and direct people to the right advice to help stop the spread of the virus.
False claims and conspiracy theories have spread rapidly on social media, touting ‘cures’ like drinking bleach or rubbing mustard and garlic into your skin. These pose a serious risk to health and can speed up the spread of the virus, by stopping people taking simple practical, preventative steps like washing their hands.
DFID’s £500,000 support will go to the Humanitarian-to-Humanitarian (H2H) Network, which has extensive experience addressing the spread of misinformation during epidemics, for example following the 2015 Ebola outbreak.
The work of the H2H Network will complement UK initiatives by the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport and the NHS to tackle misinformation online.
International Development Secretary Anne-Marie Trevelyan said:
“Misinformation harms us all. By tackling it at source we will help stop the spread of fake news – and coronavirus – worldwide, including within the UK.”
H2H will work with partners BBC Media Action and Internews to create verified information in various languages to tackle specific mistruths spreading in South East Asia and Africa. Their work will also support journalists in these regions to write more accurately about the virus using information from the World Health Organization.
Support will also go to Translators without Borders, which monitors false information in various languages and translates validated content from WHO and other health agencies, and Evidence Aid which updates a database of research on diseases each day.
The initiative will analyse social media and online content to identify where the misinformation is coming from and how it is spreading – so victims of fake news can be sent the correct information and directed to official health advice.”
I hadn’t heard that, thanks for sharing!
Fund a study to investigate the use of DIY-masks. Promote their use to at risk population, and fund add campaigns with scientists.
Although Western governments have come out against face masks, Eastern ones (China, Japan, Korea, Taiwan) are strongly in favor of people wearing face masks to protect themselves. There is evidence, that even homemade masks are good at protecting people from respiratory droplets . These could be used if the shortage in surgical masks persist.
Since in the West nobody is promoting this evidence in favour of face masks, this is a potential high impact intervention.
I think so as well. I have started drafting an article about this intervention. Feel free to give feedback / share with others who might have valuable expertise:
Culturally acceptable DIY respiratory protection: an urgent intervention for COVID-19 mitigation in countries outside East Asia?
https://docs.google.com/document/d/11HvoN43aQrx17EyuDeEKMtR_hURzBBrYfxzseOCL5JM/edit#
Paying people in Bangladesh 1$ a day to stay home.
Perhaps a Eurovision-style graphic design contest, with modest prizes given to the designers or artists who most memorably communicate the key mitigation tactics of hand-washing, social distancing, surface cleaning, and “flattening the curve.” National and regional winners could garner earned media for their victories. The design community seems effective at virally promoting good design, and especially any accolades for a designer’s work, so I could see a modest investment going far here.
I would chip in some organizing time and some dollars for a project like this, or another good project someone else thinks up!
Possibly something around domestic violence? China saw a rise in DV during its lockdown.
I could imagine the possibility of spending a month in quarantine with your abuser could inspire a sudden uptick in victims wanting to leave, if there’s somewhere for them to go.
Can you explain your thinking behind this? My model is that COVID-19 will spread to developing countries before too long, and once there, it will quickly become a much bigger problem than malaria etc. So the highest-impact global health intervention would appear to be “beta testing” of anti-COVID-19 interventions that we think can be transferred to a developing country context.
Anyway, this recent post on far-ultraviolet light looks pretty interesting. I’m pretty optimistic about ideas like this which could use the momentum of COVID-19 to overcome regulatory hurdles etc. and then end up being super valuable for other problems going forward.
Buying new masks can be a bad idea. Though there is an evidence, the problem is limited capacity of stocks. To my understanding, China produce these masks so massively that they can afford selling them to whole population. But, let’s say, in US, we have the opposite situation. And massively buying masks can reduce capacity of the healthcare system, which is the main bottleneck in preventing deaths now. There are a lot of articles on this topic, and I didn’t review them, but this can be an example. And from my discussion with an MD friend who works in a clinic I got impression that masks could be a huge problem when the healthcare system will be overloaded, as even clinical workers may not have enough protection. So I’m wondering whether we can do something with either reducing the non-targeted consumption of masks (shifting to using hand-made masks?) or with improving distribution/production of masks.
Then shouldn’t we should just buy them from China?
From what brief search provides, it can be concluded that China produces tons of masks, and was supplying it to other countries, but currently they’re also on shortage. But their regulations still assume use of masks in public, so it make sense for them to prioritize their own need. See here for an example. Please, correct me if you have some other information.
This article suggests that China’s fine with shipping out masks to other countries, and also they 12x’d production in the last month or so.
“Li Xingqian, director of the foreign trade department at the Ministry of Commerce, said China had not banned the export of masks or related materials during the coronavirus epidemic, despite other countries imposing such limits.
“Masks are freely traded products … companies can trade them in line with market principles,” Li said.
[...]
“His comments pointed to Beijing’s growing confidence in its mask production capacity, after severe shortages in late January and early February.
“As of Saturday, China’s daily output of masks, including surgical masks and medical N95 masks, was 116 million units, or 12 times the output at the start of February, the country’s top economic planning agency said on Monday.”
Thanks, though it appears that the article says that China’s production rate of masks has still not quite recovered to last year’s rate (50 billion per year, or 137 million per day, if the above number counts all days in the year).
Currently at 200 million a day, though NPR says they’re facing shortages with the materials used to make masks.
I’m sure funding for hand sanitizer, soap, masks etc in refugee camps would be welcome.
Lobbying for better healthcare/sanitation for prisoners may be effective in certain countries.
Not a funding opportunity, but I think a grassroots effort to employ social norms to enforce social distancing could be effective in countries in early stages where authorities are not enforcing, e.g. The Netherlands, UK, US, etc.
Activists (Student EA’s?) could stand with signs in public places asking people non-aggressively to please go home.