If you want to make a million dollars, then just make a million dollars
It’s just logic: Why we’re sleepwalking into a possible H5N1 bird flu pandemic – Vox
If we want to stop pandemics, then stop pandemics
It’s very understandable that the general public doesn’t want to have to become an expert in the different varieties of pandemic-potential virus out there. They don’t want to check the CDC website for case numbers, don’t want to see another round of school closures, don’t want to let pandemics consume their life again.
But if there’s limited public pressure to prevent the next pandemic — the issue doesn’t rank among the most important ones for the 2024 elections — policymakers will evidently just not do it. So I think we have to, somehow, process the wreckage wrought by Covid, and turn our sense that we can’t live through this again into a determination to do better so we never have to.
Pandemics aren’t like earthquakes. They happen for predictable reasons, and we know how to stop them. It would be an enormous tragedy if we fail to get that work done because Covid-19 was so painful and so exhausting that we can’t even think clearly about the possibility it might happen again.
She assumes we have a way to stop a pandemic because Vox kids think we do using a bunch of random ideas that have never been shown to work. She thought we could stop Covid-19 by wearing random masks in early 2020, and social distancing. We don’t have a method – those we used during Covid, not only failed, but they also caused actual harm. She thinks physical security (TSA) of air travel means we can do the same thing to stop a pandemic (which is a false equivalence).
The story writer has a BS in symbolic systems from elite Stanford University and works as a writer for Vox.
The story writer advocates for “effective altruism” which, apparently, puts smart people in charge of everything, such as pandemics and we should follow their leadership. Some consider effective altruism to overlap with socialism. Sam Bankman-Fried was a proponent of effective altruism, which for him meant solving problems by stealing others’ money.