I used to browse flutrackers.com (it is like LessWrong for pandemic risks) and I knew about the new infection from day one (early January). If you want to have an alarm bell about the next pandemic, check it often.
More generally: If one wants to have an alarm bell for a problem X, he should find a forum of geeks who write about X and check it regularly.
My main failure was that I didn’t write about the coronavirus earlier in LW (before January 20) and that my first post title “Rational prepper thread” didn’t have the word “coronavirus” in it.
It would be nice if we had somebody who specifically agreed to check sites like that regularly and then let the rest of us know if there’s something worth being concerned about. That way we could avoid duplication of effort.
I know I’m a bit late, but that sounds like something that could (up to a point) be reasonably automated.
Apart from flutrackers.com, are there other sites in a similar trend that should be bell-checked? has there been a previous effort to create a general alarm bell along the lines of these ideas?
My “threshold” criteria here should help. It seems we’ll likely get at least one front-page headline about a novel illness, and more likely many headlines, before the world reacts. My guess is that for those of us not working professionally in pandemic prevention, we’ll know early enough from the press to be on watch. The point of this model is to get us to the next step, which is reasoning under uncertainty and acting appropriately.
I used to browse flutrackers.com (it is like LessWrong for pandemic risks) and I knew about the new infection from day one (early January). If you want to have an alarm bell about the next pandemic, check it often.
More generally: If one wants to have an alarm bell for a problem X, he should find a forum of geeks who write about X and check it regularly.
My main failure was that I didn’t write about the coronavirus earlier in LW (before January 20) and that my first post title “Rational prepper thread” didn’t have the word “coronavirus” in it.
It would be nice if we had somebody who specifically agreed to check sites like that regularly and then let the rest of us know if there’s something worth being concerned about. That way we could avoid duplication of effort.
I know I’m a bit late, but that sounds like something that could (up to a point) be reasonably automated.
Apart from flutrackers.com, are there other sites in a similar trend that should be bell-checked? has there been a previous effort to create a general alarm bell along the lines of these ideas?
My “threshold” criteria here should help. It seems we’ll likely get at least one front-page headline about a novel illness, and more likely many headlines, before the world reacts. My guess is that for those of us not working professionally in pandemic prevention, we’ll know early enough from the press to be on watch. The point of this model is to get us to the next step, which is reasoning under uncertainty and acting appropriately.
By the way, check out my updated alarm bell criteria, which I just posted yesterday.