What exactly, in our rational consideration, keeps the risk relatively low? Is it a prior that calamity-level pandemics happen rarely? Is it the fact (?) that today’s situation is not that unique? Is it the hope that the virus can “back down”, somehow? Is it some fact about general behavior of viruses?
What are the “cruxes” of “the risk is relatively low” prediction, what events would increase/decrease the risk and how much? For example, what happens with the probability if a lot of mammal-to-mammal transmissions start happening? Maybe I’ve missed it, but Zvidoesn’t seem to address such points. I feel utterly confused. As if I’m missing an obvious piece of context which “nobody is talking about”.
I have little knowledge about viruses. How unique is it for a virus to be deadly (and already a deadly threat for humans), epizootic (epidemic in non-humans) and panzootic (affecting animals of many species, especially over a wide area)? (From wikipedia article.)
The most naive, over-reactive and highly likely misinformed take would be “we are in a unique situation in history (in terms of viruses), more unique thanSpanish fluandBlack Death, because the latter weren’t (?) widespread among non-humans. there are some dice rolls which separate us from disaster, but all possible dice rolls are now happening daily for days and months (and years).” … What makes all the factors cash out into “anyway, the risk is relatively low, just one digit”? Here’s an analogy: from a naive outside perspective, H5N1′s “progress” may seem as impressive as ChatGPT. “This never (?) happened, but suddenly it happened and from this point on things can only escalate (probably)”—I guess for an outsider it’s easy to get an impression like this. I feel confused because I’m not seeing it directly addressed.
What exactly, in our rational consideration, keeps the risk relatively low? Is it a prior that calamity-level pandemics happen rarely? Is it the fact (?) that today’s situation is not that unique? Is it the hope that the virus can “back down”, somehow? Is it some fact about general behavior of viruses?
What are the “cruxes” of “the risk is relatively low” prediction, what events would increase/decrease the risk and how much? For example, what happens with the probability if a lot of mammal-to-mammal transmissions start happening? Maybe I’ve missed it, but Zvi doesn’t seem to address such points. I feel utterly confused. As if I’m missing an obvious piece of context which “nobody is talking about”.
I have little knowledge about viruses. How unique is it for a virus to be deadly (and already a deadly threat for humans), epizootic (epidemic in non-humans) and panzootic (affecting animals of many species, especially over a wide area)? (From wikipedia article.)
The most naive, over-reactive and highly likely misinformed take would be “we are in a unique situation in history (in terms of viruses), more unique than Spanish flu and Black Death, because the latter weren’t (?) widespread among non-humans. there are some dice rolls which separate us from disaster, but all possible dice rolls are now happening daily for days and months (and years).” … What makes all the factors cash out into “anyway, the risk is relatively low, just one digit”? Here’s an analogy: from a naive outside perspective, H5N1′s “progress” may seem as impressive as ChatGPT. “This never (?) happened, but suddenly it happened and from this point on things can only escalate (probably)”—I guess for an outsider it’s easy to get an impression like this. I feel confused because I’m not seeing it directly addressed.