You say that the impact/scale of COVID is “huge”. I think this might mislead people who are used to thinking about the problems EAs think about. Here’s why.
I think COVID is probably going to cause on the order of 100 million DALYs this year, based on predictions like this; I think that 50-95% the damage ever done by COVID will be done this year. On the scale that 80000 Hours uses to assess the scale of problems, this would be ranked as importance level 11 or so.
I think this is lower than most things EAs consider working on or funding. For example:
This is a logarithmic scale, so for example, according to this scale, health in poor countries is 100 times more important than COVID.
So given that COVID seems likely to be between 100x and 10000x less important than the main other cause areas EAs think about, I think it’s misleading to describe its scale as “huge”.
You have to carefully consider what scale means when switching between one-time interventions and ongoing projects. Cost-effectiveness means the same thing in both, though. If there are opportunities to save a marginal DALY by spending under $1000, then that will be competitive with a public health initiative.
It’s not obvious to me that there are such opportunities, unfortunately. (Better suppression in the earliest days of COVID-19 would have been massively cost-effective, but it’s far beyond that point now.)
If someone has a good way to save a marginal DALY from COVID-19 for $1000 or less, though, I’d be very excited.
You say that the impact/scale of COVID is “huge”. I think this might mislead people who are used to thinking about the problems EAs think about. Here’s why.
I think COVID is probably going to cause on the order of 100 million DALYs this year, based on predictions like this; I think that 50-95% the damage ever done by COVID will be done this year. On the scale that 80000 Hours uses to assess the scale of problems, this would be ranked as importance level 11 or so.
I think this is lower than most things EAs consider working on or funding. For example:
Health in poor countries and factory farming is a 13 (this seems weirdly low to me, but it’s their number)
Climate change is a 14
Nuclear security and positively shaping the development of AI are both 15
This is a logarithmic scale, so for example, according to this scale, health in poor countries is 100 times more important than COVID.
So given that COVID seems likely to be between 100x and 10000x less important than the main other cause areas EAs think about, I think it’s misleading to describe its scale as “huge”.
You have to carefully consider what scale means when switching between one-time interventions and ongoing projects. Cost-effectiveness means the same thing in both, though. If there are opportunities to save a marginal DALY by spending under $1000, then that will be competitive with a public health initiative.
It’s not obvious to me that there are such opportunities, unfortunately. (Better suppression in the earliest days of COVID-19 would have been massively cost-effective, but it’s far beyond that point now.)
If someone has a good way to save a marginal DALY from COVID-19 for $1000 or less, though, I’d be very excited.