[disclaimer: I am co-director of CSER, but giving an individual view]. Hi, a quick comment (apologies that I may not have time to respond to replies, very busy period).
>“We understand that CSER’s work mostly has little direct relevance to COVID-19, but some of it is relevant to pandemics and that they are looking to expand this element of their team. We believe that this may be a suitable choice for funders inspired to support pandemics as a result of the coronavirus outbreak.”
This is accurate in my view. However, I would emphasise that for EA funders keen to support (a) *direct* response to Covid-19 and/or (b) most time-effective use of funds relating to the current situation within the next 6 months, my view is that there are likely to be more timely interventions than supporting CSER at this immediate time.
E.g. we ourselves are working to support other initiatives by collaborators relating to the immediate situation (I have been looking for ways to support Univursa*, whose researchers we’ve worked with before, and which I individually consider particularly promising in the current situation). As the writeup says, our work is more focused on broader GCR and pandemic/biorisk goverance and preparedness. We are in the process of making a number of hires (50% of whom are biorisk/epidemiology/biosecurity specialists). I expect we will have a lesser need for additional funding in the 0-6 month window. In the >6 month window, as the world (hopefully) moves from immediate crisis response to better preparedness/governance/biosecurity, and as our expanded bio team develops expands its work relevant to this, we are likely to have significantly more RFMF (although I could not give a view at this time on comparative value of funds with other orgs in future). I should also mention that some of our work is likely to be under the banner of other initiatives our researchers are a part of (e.g. the Biorisc initiative, which has gained good traction in the UK policy context https://www.caths.cam.ac.uk/research/biorisc)
Very grateful to Sanjay, and to everyone else working hard to identify opportunities to combat Covid-19!
*Footnote on my being excited about Univursa: While the approach was initially developed with a focus on haemorrhagic epidemics (e.g. ebola), based on my analysis of the method, and discussion with the researchers, I believe it will be very suitable for adaptation to covid-19 diagnostics (although no guarantees can be made until database development and field testing completed); and could play a v important role in resource-limited settings like sub-saharan Africa where testing and outbreak detection ability is extremely limited. Further, above and beyond regional benefits, it is my understanding that unless appropriate tools are provided to these regions, getting this pandemic under control globally will be a lot more challenging.
Thanks Sean_o_h. In case it’s not coming across clearly in the write-up, some donation opportunities considered are directly relevant to COVID-19, and some are less directly relevant (e.g. they cover pandemics generally, which may be an appealing donation idea for those inspired to donate because of COVID-19).
An indication of whether the project is directly or indirectly relevant is given in the table in section ‘0. Exec Summary’ (see the table with the purple header)
[disclaimer: I am co-director of CSER, but giving an individual view]. Hi, a quick comment (apologies that I may not have time to respond to replies, very busy period).
>“We understand that CSER’s work mostly has little direct relevance to COVID-19, but some of it is relevant to pandemics and that they are looking to expand this element of their team. We believe that this may be a suitable choice for funders inspired to support pandemics as a result of the coronavirus outbreak.”
This is accurate in my view. However, I would emphasise that for EA funders keen to support (a) *direct* response to Covid-19 and/or (b) most time-effective use of funds relating to the current situation within the next 6 months, my view is that there are likely to be more timely interventions than supporting CSER at this immediate time.
E.g. we ourselves are working to support other initiatives by collaborators relating to the immediate situation (I have been looking for ways to support Univursa*, whose researchers we’ve worked with before, and which I individually consider particularly promising in the current situation). As the writeup says, our work is more focused on broader GCR and pandemic/biorisk goverance and preparedness. We are in the process of making a number of hires (50% of whom are biorisk/epidemiology/biosecurity specialists). I expect we will have a lesser need for additional funding in the 0-6 month window. In the >6 month window, as the world (hopefully) moves from immediate crisis response to better preparedness/governance/biosecurity, and as our expanded bio team develops expands its work relevant to this, we are likely to have significantly more RFMF (although I could not give a view at this time on comparative value of funds with other orgs in future). I should also mention that some of our work is likely to be under the banner of other initiatives our researchers are a part of (e.g. the Biorisc initiative, which has gained good traction in the UK policy context https://www.caths.cam.ac.uk/research/biorisc)
Very grateful to Sanjay, and to everyone else working hard to identify opportunities to combat Covid-19!
*Footnote on my being excited about Univursa: While the approach was initially developed with a focus on haemorrhagic epidemics (e.g. ebola), based on my analysis of the method, and discussion with the researchers, I believe it will be very suitable for adaptation to covid-19 diagnostics (although no guarantees can be made until database development and field testing completed); and could play a v important role in resource-limited settings like sub-saharan Africa where testing and outbreak detection ability is extremely limited. Further, above and beyond regional benefits, it is my understanding that unless appropriate tools are provided to these regions, getting this pandemic under control globally will be a lot more challenging.
Thanks Sean_o_h. In case it’s not coming across clearly in the write-up, some donation opportunities considered are directly relevant to COVID-19, and some are less directly relevant (e.g. they cover pandemics generally, which may be an appealing donation idea for those inspired to donate because of COVID-19).
An indication of whether the project is directly or indirectly relevant is given in the table in section ‘0. Exec Summary’ (see the table with the purple header)