One of the more positive signs that I’ve seen in recent times, is that well-informed elite opinion (going by, for example, the Economist editorials) has started to shift towards scepticism of institutions and a recognition of how badly they’ve failed. Among the people who matter for policymaking, the scale of the failure has not been swept under the rug. See here:
We believe that Mr Biden is wrong. A waiver may signal that his administration cares about the world, but it is at best an empty gesture and at worst a cynical one.
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Economists’ central estimate for the direct value of a course is $2,900—if you include factors like long covid and the effect of impaired education, the total is much bigger.
This strikes me as the sort of remark I’d expect to see in one of these comment threads, which has to be a good sign.
In that same issue, we also saw the first serious attempt that I’ve seen to calculate the total death toll of Covid, accounting for all reporting biases, throughout the world. The Economist was the only publication I’ve seen that didn’t parrot the almost-meaningless official death toll figures. The true answer is, of course, horrifying: between 7.1m and 12.7m dead, with a central estimate of 10.2m—this unfortunately means that we ended up with the worst case scenario I imagined back in late February. Moreover, we appear to currently be at the deadliest point of the entire pandemic.
For anyone reading, please consider following in Vitalik’s footsteps and donating to the GiveIndia Oxygen fundraiser, which likely beats givewell’s top charities in terms of life-years saved per dollar.
One of the more positive signs that I’ve seen in recent times, is that well-informed elite opinion (going by, for example, the Economist editorials) has started to shift towards scepticism of institutions and a recognition of how badly they’ve failed. Among the people who matter for policymaking, the scale of the failure has not been swept under the rug. See here:
This strikes me as the sort of remark I’d expect to see in one of these comment threads, which has to be a good sign.
In that same issue, we also saw the first serious attempt that I’ve seen to calculate the total death toll of Covid, accounting for all reporting biases, throughout the world. The Economist was the only publication I’ve seen that didn’t parrot the almost-meaningless official death toll figures. The true answer is, of course, horrifying: between 7.1m and 12.7m dead, with a central estimate of 10.2m—this unfortunately means that we ended up with the worst case scenario I imagined back in late February. Moreover, we appear to currently be at the deadliest point of the entire pandemic.