This. IIRC by ~April 2020 there were some researchers and experts asking why none of the prevention measures were focused on improving ventilation in public spaces. By ~June the same was happening for the pretty clear evidence that covid was airborne and not transmitted by surfaces (parks near me were closing off their outdoor picnic tables as a covid measure!).
And of course, we can talk about “warp speed” vaccine development all we like, but if we had had better public policy over the last 30 years, Moderna would likely have been already focusing on infectious disease instead of cancer, and had multiple well-respected, well-tested, well-trusted mRNA vaccines on the market, so that the needed regulatory and physical infrastructures could have already been truly ready to go in January when they designed their covid vaccine. We haven’t learned these lessons even after the fact. We haven’t improved our institutions for next time. We haven’t educated the public or our leaders. We seem to have decided to pretend covid was close to a worst case scenario for a pandemic, instead of realizing that there can be much more deadly diseases, and much more rapidly spread diseases.
AI seems...about the same to me in how the public is reacting so far? Lots of concerns about job losses or naughty words, so that’s what companies and legislators are incentivized to (be seen as trying to) fix, and most people either treat very bad outcomes as too outlandish to discuss, or treat not-so-very-small probabilities as too unlikely to worry about regardless of how bad they’d be if they happened.
This. IIRC by ~April 2020 there were some researchers and experts asking why none of the prevention measures were focused on improving ventilation in public spaces. By ~June the same was happening for the pretty clear evidence that covid was airborne and not transmitted by surfaces (parks near me were closing off their outdoor picnic tables as a covid measure!).
And of course, we can talk about “warp speed” vaccine development all we like, but if we had had better public policy over the last 30 years, Moderna would likely have been already focusing on infectious disease instead of cancer, and had multiple well-respected, well-tested, well-trusted mRNA vaccines on the market, so that the needed regulatory and physical infrastructures could have already been truly ready to go in January when they designed their covid vaccine. We haven’t learned these lessons even after the fact. We haven’t improved our institutions for next time. We haven’t educated the public or our leaders. We seem to have decided to pretend covid was close to a worst case scenario for a pandemic, instead of realizing that there can be much more deadly diseases, and much more rapidly spread diseases.
AI seems...about the same to me in how the public is reacting so far? Lots of concerns about job losses or naughty words, so that’s what companies and legislators are incentivized to (be seen as trying to) fix, and most people either treat very bad outcomes as too outlandish to discuss, or treat not-so-very-small probabilities as too unlikely to worry about regardless of how bad they’d be if they happened.