Quick takes

Trump recently said in an interview (https://time.com/6972973/biden-trump-bird-flu-covid/) that he would seek to disband the White House office for pandemic preparedness. Given that he usually doesn't give specifics on his policy positions, this seems like something he is particularly interested in. I know politics is discouraged on the EA forum, but I thought I would post this to say: EA should really be preparing for a Trump presidency. He's up in the polls and IMO has a >50% chance of winning the election. Right now politicians seem relatively receptive to EA ideas, this may change under a Trump administration.

I am concerned about the H5N1 situation in dairy cows and have written and overview document to which I occasionally add new learnings (new to me or new to world). I also set up a WhatsApp community that anyone is welcome to join for discussion & sharing news. In brief: * I believe there are quite a few (~50-250) humans infected recently, but no sustained human-to-human transmission * I estimate the Infection Fatality Rate substantially lower than the ALERT team (theirs is 63% that CFR >= 10%), something like 80%CI = 0.1 - 5.0 * The government's response is astoundingly bad - I find it insane that raw milk is still being sold, with a high likelihood that some of it contains infectious H5N1 * There are still quite a few genetic barriers to sustained human-to-human transmission * This might be a good time to push specific pandemic preparedness policies

Quote from VC Josh Wolfe: https://overcast.fm/+5AWO95pnw/46:15

Given how bird flu is progressing (spread in many cows, virologists believing rumors that humans are getting infected but no human-to-human spread yet), this would be a good time to start a protest movement for biosafety/against factory farming in the US.

Longtermist shower thought: what if we had a campaign to install Far-UVC in poultry farms? Seems like it could: 1. Reduce a bunch of diseases in the birds, which is good for: a. the birds’ welfare; b. the workers’ welfare; c. Therefore maybe the farmers’ bottom line?; d. Preventing/suppressing human pandemics (eg avian flu) 2. Would hopefully drive down the cost curve of Far-UVC 3. May also generate safety data in chickens, which could be helpful for derisking it for humans Insofar as one of the main obstacles is humans' concerns for health effects, this would at least only raise these for a small group of workers.

I'm working on an article about gene drives to eradicate malaria, and am looking for biology experts who can help me understand certain areas I'm finding confusing and fact check claims I feel unsure about. If you are a masters or grad student in biology and would be interested in helping, I would be incredibly grateful.   An example of a question I've been trying to answer today: How likely is successful crossbreeding between subspecies of Anopheles Gambiae (such as anopheles gambiae s.s. and anopheles arabiensis), and how likely is successful crossbreeding between anopheles gambiae and other complexes?   If you know the answer to questions like these or would have an easy time finding it out, send me a dm! Happy to pay for your time.

Vaccines saved 150M+ lives over the past 50 years, including 100M+ infants and nearly 100M lives from Measles alone: https://www.gavi.org/vaccineswork/new-data-shows-vaccines-have-saved-154-million-lives-past-50-years https://www.who.int/news/item/24-04-2024-global-immunization-efforts-have-saved-at-least-154-million-lives-over-the-past-50-years

Risk neutral grantmakers should, if they have not already, strongly consider modifying their position. If such a grantmaker has a choice of an intervention with 1000 utils of potential impact but only 1% chance of working out (10 utils in expectation), and an intervention with 10 utils of potential impact but 90% likely to work out (9 utils in expectation), I would suggest that one should go with the latter at this point where the x-risk community is hopefully still in its early days.  The reason is that having wins has value in and of itself. I think this is especially true in the x-risk domain where the path to impact is uncertain and complex. At least now, in the hopefully early days of such work, there might be significant value by just demonstrating to ourselves, and perhaps major donors on the fence on whether to become "EA/x-risk donors" and also perhaps talent wondering if EA "is for real", that we can do something.