I find such stylised models quite unhelpful—not so much “wrong” as “missing the point”. X-risks aren’t a generalised and continuous quantity; they’re very specific discrete events—and to make the modelling more fun, don’t have any precedents to work from. IMO outside-view economic analysis just isn’t useful here, where the notion of a (implicitly iid) hazard rate doesn’t match the situation.
X-safety is also not something you can “produce”, it’s not fungible or a commodity. If you want safety we all have to avoid doing anything unsafe; offsets aren’t actually possible in the long run (or IMO short term, but that’s an additional argument).
It also would have undertaken adequate investments in surveillance, PPE, research, and other capacities in response to data about previous coronaviruses such as SARS to stop COVID-19 in its tracks.
Trivially yes, but note that Australia and New Zealand both managed national elimination by June 2020 without having particularly good mask policies or any vaccines! China also squashed COVID with only NPIs! Of course doing so on a global scale is more difficult, but it’s a coordination problem, not one of inadequate technical capabilities.
I find such stylised models quite unhelpful—not so much “wrong” as “missing the point”. X-risks aren’t a generalised and continuous quantity; they’re very specific discrete events—and to make the modelling more fun, don’t have any precedents to work from. IMO outside-view economic analysis just isn’t useful here, where the notion of a (implicitly iid) hazard rate doesn’t match the situation.
X-safety is also not something you can “produce”, it’s not fungible or a commodity. If you want safety we all have to avoid doing anything unsafe; offsets aren’t actually possible in the long run (or IMO short term, but that’s an additional argument).
Trivially yes, but note that Australia and New Zealand both managed national elimination by June 2020 without having particularly good mask policies or any vaccines! China also squashed COVID with only NPIs! Of course doing so on a global scale is more difficult, but it’s a coordination problem, not one of inadequate technical capabilities.