My name is Dermot, I’m from Ireland, and I am here to talk about pandemics and how we can prevent them.
My professional background is in finance. I studied Economics and Finance in UCD, was formerly a CFA Charterholder, and am a recent alumnus of Nassim Taleb’s Real World Risk Institute.
During the Covid-19 pandemic, I began researching contagious diseases and epidemic control. Now, I write about the theory of Risk Management and how it can be applied to epidemic control in the real world, with the ultimate goal of permanently ending the threat of pandemic-potential pathogens.
You can read more of my thoughts here: https://pandemicprevention.substack.com/
Hello! My name is Dermot and I’m from Ireland. Pandemics (and how to stop them) have brought me to the EA Forums.
My professional background is in the financial markets – I am an investment risk manager by trade – so I have none of the skills or training one would normally associate with infectious disease and outbreak control. But, like a lot of people, I started to take an interest in Covid-19 during the first lockdown (what else was there to do?). My initial reaction was that we had screwed this one up, but the long-term question remained: how do we make sure a catastrophe like this never happens again?
Over the following weeks and months (and years, now), I tracked the Covid-19 outbreak through the datasets and the research papers. I reached out to journalists, politicians, and Covid activists to discuss policy reform. I wrote articles for the news media. For a few months, I found myself working on a policy proposal with a group of prominent Irish academics. As an outsider on the inside of academia, it was an enlightening experience.
Over the course of my journey, I became increasingly confident that pandemics were the kind of problem that could be solved – completely and permanently. Unfortunately, that solution would require perspectives and skillsets which seemed to be rare among the prevailing pandemic policy-making establishment… which brought me to EA. Within EA there is a focus on long-term thinking and existential risk management, and these are exactly the kinds of perspectives we will need to solve a problem of this nature.
So, I am here to share my experiences and analysis, but I’m also here to learn from domain experts, to give and receive feedback on key ideas, and to discuss pandemic prevention and preparedness with people who have also spent a lot of time thinking about it. There aren’t many platforms where it is possible to have a rational, informed conversation about the Covid-19 pandemic, pandemic-potential pathogens, and global pandemic policy these days. I’m hoping that I can find that here.
Pandemic prevention is entirely achievable, and within our lifetimes (I’m a Millennial). We can permanently end the threat that PPPs pose to humanity, and I think there’s a lot of potential for the EA community to play a major role in that solution.
Dermot