Approving this project as falling within Manifund's charitable mission in fostering biosecurity research.
6
Estimating annual burden of airborne disease (last mile to MVP)
Project summary
Qally’s is a non-profit producing bespoke quantitative (e.g. cost-effectiveness) analyses for altruistic projects. We seek funding for a project quantifying the annual societal burden of airborne diseases in the US.
Much of the project has already been completed by Vivian Belenky and Richard Bruns. The last mile to MVP of this project — where Qally’s would come in — mostly involves quantifying the welfare costs of long COVID.
What are this project's goals and how can they be achieved?
The goal of the broadly-defined project (quantifying the annual societal burden of airborne diseases in the US) is to have a number that emphasizes to policymakers the enormous benefits of “never suffering from airborne disease (e.g. colds) again.” (Vivian and Richard see this message as more persuasive for policymakers than messages that emphasize pandemic risk reduction. Of course, including pandemic risk would only increase estimates of the burden of airborne disease.)
We hope that this number will help advocacy for investments in and deployment of technologies that improve indoor air quality (e.g. Far-UVC). Such technologies would contribute to defenses against pandemics far worse than the recent COVID-19 pandemic.
The burden of long COVID in particular is expected to be one of the most significant components of the overall burden of airborne diseases (alongside COVID loss of life, upper respiratory infections, and lower respiratory infections).
(Note that, to the best of Vivian and Richard’s knowledge, there do not exist estimates of the annual burden of airborne diseases in the US from after the COVID-19 pandemic.)
How will this funding be used?
Hours on this project will cost approximately $60 per hour. This will include wage costs and 20% organization overhead. The exact hourly rate will depend on how the work gets split between Joel and Aron. (See below.)
If we receive funding for 60 hours up to X>60 hours (~$3,600 to X * ~$60), then we will undertake the above project to the best of our ability within the time funded. If we receive funding for more hours than is needed to complete the project, we will either
Work on the next most important part of the burden of airborne disease project (this might mean building a Monte Carlo model, or researching a contribution to the burden other than long COVID, or helping write up results in a paper),
Write a public post about our findings, or
Not accept (or return) remaining funding,
depending on the judgment of Vivian Belenky and Richard Bruns.
Who is on the team and what's their track record on similar projects?
Joel Becker. Joel has recently created various cost-effectiveness analyses for AI safety and biosecurity organizations, and has been helping build Dendritic, a biosecurity operations center. Previously, Joel was an economics PhD student at NYU and a Predoctoral Fellow at Harvard.
Aron Lajko. Aron has a masters degree in Bioengineering from Imperial College London. This year he has supported Joel’s cost-effectiveness projects. Also, Aron has deep context on EA biosecurity.
What are the most likely causes and outcomes if this project fails? (premortem)
Possible causes of failure include:
Insufficient funding.
The question we are working on is too challenging to answer convincingly.
Any reasons why the larger burden of airborne disease project might fail.
Estimates of the annual burden of airborne disease are not convincing to policymakers.
Vivian Belenky, Richard Bruns, and Joel do not have time to write up results.
If the question is too challenging to answer convincingly, the project might exclude long COVID from calculations, moving forward with a significantly lower estimate for the burden of airborne disease.
donated $3,600
donated $3,400
Gavriel Kleinwaks
about 2 years ago
Offering a grant at this point after Vivian reached out to me and told me about a couple of customers for the estimate that are excited to have this sooner rather than later.
None of the possible conflicts of interest really gave me reservations but for the sake of disclosure: Joel and I are friends, and (although Vivian and Richard aren't the direct recipients), Vivian and I collaborate closely, and I am likely to begin working with Richard soon on a related project. As mentioned in my comment below, this estimate is, in fact, something that I might wind up using.
donated $3,400
Gavriel Kleinwaks
over 2 years ago
Props to Austin for filling the minimum funding before I had a chance to ask any questions, haha. But for the sake of future/>min funding and general clarity:
Initial thoughts:
Qally's seems like a good thing to exist, and re: Nuño's comment, I like the "bespoke" model you seem to be pursuing; I think that does actually make more sense for something like this than a large-scale operating lump sum. (I can see the risk of people leaving Qally's to pursue other, more stable projects, but this is such a contractor-friendly model.)
Also, I'm not a decision-maker, but as a member of a fellow advocacy team, I am a potential customer for this information! Of course I'm very interested in Nuño's question about whether there are actual decision-makers who could use this more directly.
Concur with Austin--this is a trustworthy team that are suited for the project. (Aside from Joel and Viv, I'm familiar with Richard's work.)
I've personally received conflicting opinions from people in the field about how much policymakers care about/pay attention to in-depth analyses that they didn't actually commission. I like that this analysis format will result in a solid headline number that can be communicated simply.
Questions:
I'm sort of surprised that this needed to be pursued through independent funding--this is such a think-tank-friendly project! Richard works at the Center for Health Security and even produced an analysis in collaboration with Institute for Progress that seems super related to this! What's the missing expertise that Qally's brings to the table, and why isn't CHS backing this piece of the project?
The think-tank-friendliness of it reduces the failure risk from the team not having time to write up results--possibly could rope in the dedicated policy advocates at IfP or Rethink for advocacy-style writing?
Are you also considering long-term costs of other viruses? Just curious--I know this is much more speculative, but my impression is that COVID just had the most attention on it for a while and now there's increasing scientific interest in possible long-term effects of flu. That would also emphasize the importance of endemic disease. But could be way too complicated, just wondering if it was discussed!
You reference researching other contributions to disease burden as a possible extension of this project--what contributions would those be, if the bulk of the project has already been completed?
Joel Becker
over 2 years ago
Thank you for the comment @GavrielK!
On one of your thoughts:
I've personally received conflicting opinions from people in the field about how much policymakers care about/pay attention to in-depth analyses that they didn't actually commission. I like that this analysis format will result in a solid headline number that can be communicated simply.
I think the skepticism from people in the field is warranted. And I agree it's attractive that this project will result in a headline number -- this is definitely what Vivian and Richard have in mind. But I think there's a related risk of the project here: because the (at least MVP) analysis will be less in-depth, the headline number will be easier to undermine.
On your questions:
I'm sort of surprised that this needed to be pursued through independent funding [...] What's the missing expertise that Qally's brings to the table, and why isn't CHS backing this piece of the project?
I think the missing expertise is: having the time to do the work! My understanding is that the project hasn't moved for a few months for this reason. That said, since posting this project on Manifund, I'm less confident that Vivian would not contribute (further than they already have) to the nitty gritty of the long COVID estimates; I guess this is mostly upside from your perspective.
As for why CHS isn't backing this project, I think there's a mix of (1) limited JHCHS staff capacity, and (2) part of the original motivation of this project being Vivian receiving mentorship from Richard. (I am happy to explore the possibility of funding from JHCHS at some point.)
The think-tank-friendliness of it reduces the failure risk from the team not having time to write up results--possibly could rope in the dedicated policy advocates at IfP or Rethink for advocacy-style writing?
Could you possibly expand on what roping in dedicated policy advocates would involve? Asking them to produce a document that reads like a policy report, given our less friendly write-up? And perhaps asking them to share this document with contacts in government and media?
Are you also considering long-term costs of other viruses? Just curious--I know this is much more speculative, but my impression is that COVID just had the most attention on it for a while and now there's increasing scientific interest in possible long-term effects of flu. That would also emphasize the importance of endemic disease. But could be way too complicated, just wondering if it was discussed!
Aron and I are not, at least not right now. But Vivian and Richard have so far considered: common cold, influenza, and TB.
You reference researching other contributions to disease burden as a possible extension of this project--what contributions would those be, if the bulk of the project has already been completed?
The other components that Vivian has marked as needing to be revisited are: mainline estimates of direct medical costs of common cold and of influenza, lost productivity from influenza, and learning loss due to common cold and influenza. They already have low and high estimates for each of these, but I think hasn't thought about which of these estimates is more appropriate (which in turn would affect their averaging for the mainline estimate).
donated $3,400
Gavriel Kleinwaks
about 2 years ago
@joel_bkr Sorry for missing this before! In response to "Could you possibly expand on what roping in dedicated policy advocates would involve?": Yes, looks like writing a policy report, possibly including reasonable policy recommendations, and socializing the report/publishing it in a place that media and policymakers are more likely to see. To be fair, any possible partners would have existing priorities and I can understand the difficulty of finding anyone who has serious time to dedicate to this.
donated $3,600
Austin Chen
over 2 years ago
Funding this to the minimum ask, mostly because 1) the ask is small, 2) I highly trust two of the people involved (Joel and Vivian), and 3) I want to encourage the existence of Qally's, as I could imagine Manifund itself being a client looking to buy retrospective analyses.
I'm actually not sure how big of an issue Long Covid is -- my uniformed take is "not a big problem". But this mostly stems from my emotional reaction against covid safetyism, and isn't very grounded in factual analysis, so I'm excited to see what the research shows!
Joel Becker
over 2 years ago
Thank you for taking the time to review, @Austin!
I'd be excited to talk about Manifund becoming a client. Do you have a project in mind?
Nuño Sempere
over 2 years ago
Overall I don't really understand the biosecurity ecosystem or how this would fit in, so I'm thinking I'm probably a bad funder here. Still, some questions:
Do you already have some decision-makers who could use these estimates to make different decisions?
How valuable do you think that this project is without the long covid estimate?
Who is actually doing this work? Vivian and Richard, or Joel and Aron?
Why are you doing stuff $3.6k a time, rather than having set up some larger project with existing biosecurity grantmakers?
Joel Becker
over 2 years ago
Thanks for the questions @NunoSempere.
Do you already have some decision-makers who could use these estimates to make different decisions?
Waiting on some emails that will help me answer this; will get back to you soon.
How valuable do you think that this project is without the long covid estimate?
I just put this question to Vivian, who says: "I think without the long covid estimate it probably just never gets published."
Who is actually doing this work? Vivian and Richard, or Joel and Aron?
Joel and Aron. (If "this work" refers to building the long COVID estimate.)
Why are you doing stuff $3.6k a time, rather than having set up some larger project with existing biosecurity grantmakers?
Very possible that I've made a silly decision somewhere, but here's how it looks from my side:
Earlier this year I applied to LTFF and Lightspeed for ~general funding for Qally's. These applications were rejected.
I think rejection was the right call -- even if you think higher-effort quantitative analyses are worthwhile, it's preferable for them to come with demand signals rather than subsidizing my discretionary offerings.
I didn't apply to ~any other projects nor sources of funding because of my US work visa stuff.
Mostly this is 'getting a US work visa attached to your own new organization requires a lot of time.'
To a lesser extent this is 'the expected benefit of finding new projects is lower than usual, because I would only proceed with these projects if I was approved for the visa.'
My visa petition was approved ~4 weeks ago; I have started to seriously look for projects in that time. One project that came up was this one. It currently doesn't have a source of funding, so I put up a Manifund proposal.
All that said, I would, of course, like to work >$3.6k at a time. A few things on this:
I hope that this application will attract more than the minimum!
It's plausible that this will be a larger project. There are a bunch of other things to work on for this project, which I currently have cached as 'things Vivian or Richard will do' or 'things that aren't necessary for MVP.'
I almost feel like I don't know other existing biosecurity grantmakers...! Linch has moved away from this sort of thing. Open Philanthropy staff are in the business of larger amounts of money. My uninvestigated understanding from this proposal is that Convergent Research (where Vivian has recently worked) aren't able to fund adjacent projects. So I posted on Manifund and notified @GavrielK. (I'm apparently allowed to fund myself, but don't want to.)
There is another project that I might take on, which I expect would be ~full-time for many months.