we as a community have expended almost no effort on preventing them.
I’m not so sure about that. Isn’t the effective altruist focus on global poverty/disease reducing the risk of pandemic? I know very little about epidemiology, but if seems as if a lot of scary diseases (AIDs, ebola...) would never have spread to the human population if certain regions of the third world had better medical infrastructure.
That’s fair. It’s certianly true that poverty reduction also reduces pandemic risk. But it does so inditectly and slowly. There are probably faster ways to reduce pandemic risk than working on poverty.
I’m not so sure about that. Isn’t the effective altruist focus on global poverty/disease reducing the risk of pandemic? I know very little about epidemiology, but if seems as if a lot of scary diseases (AIDs, ebola...) would never have spread to the human population if certain regions of the third world had better medical infrastructure.
That’s fair. It’s certianly true that poverty reduction also reduces pandemic risk. But it does so inditectly and slowly. There are probably faster ways to reduce pandemic risk than working on poverty.