# Humanity Learned Almost Nothing From COVID-19

Summary: __Looking over humanity's response to the COVID-19 pandemic, almost
six years later, reveals that we've forgotten to fulfill our intent at
preparing for the next pandemic. I rant.__

*content warning*: A single carefully placed slur.

> If we want to create a world free of pandemics and other biological
catastrophes, the time to act is now.

*—US White House, [“ FACT SHEET: The Biden Administration’s Historic Investment in Pandemic Preparedness and Biodefense in the FY 2023 President’s Budget ”](https://bidenwhitehouse.archives.gov/briefing-room/statements-releases/2022/03/28/fact-sheet-the-biden-administrations-historic-investment-in-pandemic-preparedness-and-biodefense-in-the-fy-2023-presidents-budget/), 2022*

Around five years, [a global
pandemic](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/COVID-19_pandemic) caused by
[a coronavirus](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SARS-Cov-2) started.

In the course of the pandemic, there have been at
least [6 million deaths and more than 25 million excess
deaths](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/COVID-19_pandemic_deaths). The
value of QALYs lost due to the pandemic in the US alone was around [**\$5
trio.**](https://ifp.org/weighing-the-cost-of-the-pandemic/#lives-lost),
the GDP loss in the US alone in 2020 [**\$2
trio.**](https://ifp.org/weighing-the-cost-of-the-pandemic/#gdp-loss).
The loss of gross world product is around [**\$17-35 trio.** over five
years](https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0264999323003632#sec5),
my rough guess would be that lockdowns caused a loss of more than a
giga[QALY](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quality-Adjusted_Life_Year)
(~4 bio. people (half the world's population) in lockdown for a ~year
in total, at ~75% value of their normal time), and not to speak of e.g.
[long COVID](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long-COVID).

Those are **_staggering_** numbers. Megadeaths caused, gigaQALYs lost,
tens of trillions of dollars in value destroyed. It's probably the most
war-like event most of us have ever lived through[^hope].

[^hope]: And ever *will* live through (fingers crossed :-|)

Surely, then, humanity has learned its lesson about pandemics?

lol. lmao

Humanity seems to have learned *almost nothing*, and I'm being charitable
here. Plausibly, in total, we have learned the wrong lessons.

Remember those pandemic prevention and preparedness bills and programs
that were announced in the US and the EU in 2021, equipped with billions
of dollars and euros and pounds to prevent and fight pandemics? The [EU
HERA](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Health_Emergency_Preparedness_and_Response_Authority)
and the [US Historic Investment in Pandemic
Preparedness](https://bidenwhitehouse.archives.gov/briefing-room/statements-releases/2022/03/28/fact-sheet-the-biden-administrations-historic-investment-in-pandemic-preparedness-and-biodefense-in-the-fy-2023-presidents-budget/)?
The [Pandemic Fund](https://www.thepandemicfund.org/)?
HERA was said to [receive ~4.5 bio. € for
2022-2027](https://health.ec.europa.eu/health-emergency-preparedness-and-response-hera/funding-and-opportunities_en)
([allegedly 30 bio.
€](https://eufundingoverview.be/funding/health-emergency-preparedness-and-response-authority-hera)
if you believe EU accounting magic
for programs that existed already anyway), the US initiative [$88.2
bio](https://bidenwhitehouse.archives.gov/briefing-room/statements-releases/2022/03/28/fact-sheet-the-biden-administrations-historic-investment-in-pandemic-preparedness-and-biodefense-in-the-fy-2023-presidents-budget/).
The Pandemic Fund got pledged $3 bio.

You know what happened to them?

Take a *good fucking guess*.

Yeah, that's right. They were starved of funding,
neglected, or mostly forgotten. So far, HERA has received
[1.28 bio. €+1.27 bio. €+0.73 bio. €+0.358 bio. €=3.28 bio.
€](https://health.ec.europa.eu/document/download/06895ccf-03d8-43b9-9c24-c4aa03c84b8a_en?filename=hera_c_2025_1851_annex_en.pdf)
of the promised 4.5 bio. € (with declining
investment), the US Historic Investment™ attempt has resulted [~$770
mio.](https://www.aamc.org/advocacy-policy/washington-highlights/biden-signs-fy-23-omnibus-increases-research-health-workforce)
of the planned $88.2 bio. funding allocation
($760 mio. to the CDC and a whopping $9.5 mio. to
the Hospital Preparedness Program)) since the funding
change didn't pass congress, and the Pandemic Fund has received [$3.1
bio](https://www.worldbank.org/en/news/press-release/2024/10/31/pandemic-fund-raises-us-982-million-in-new-commitments-from-governments-and-an-additional-us-1-8-billion-in-co-financing),
with an unmet funding gap of $1
bio. as of the time of writing. The UK allocated
[£460M](https://www.kingsfund.org.uk/insight-and-analysis/long-reads/autumn-budget-2024-health-and-care)
to pandemic prevention.  Numbers are harder to come by for China, India
and other large developing countries, but my guess is that there's even
less investment there (and that there wasn't much move towards pandemic
prevention there in the first place).

This is infuriating. It is *unacceptable*. Humanity is being __completely
fucking retarded__. We got insanely lucky: The pandemic was *really bad*,
but far less horrific than possible[^gulp], it was basically the mildest
pandemic that could've caused global lockdowns. Basically every living
human got infected[^estimate], many had their loved ones die. Nature
shot us a *very* stern look.

> Pandemics can happen. They can kill you. You should know better,
here's a reminder.

[^gulp]: Yeah, I don't feel good about what's plausibly coming down the pipeline.

[^estimate]: [OWID says](https://ourworldindata.org/coronavirus) there were ~700 mio. cases worldwide in early 2024, but you and I know that's a severe under-estimate.

There is some upshot: We have some increased *technical* capacity and knowledge, e.g. on how to manufacture mRNA vaccines, but there's very large swaths of people who have learned the opposite lesson that pandemics aren't real & vaccines don't work, or that the whole thing was orchestrated and governments shouldn't be trusted[^trust].

[^trust]: I do agree that governments covered themselves in shame.

Our reaction: Throw trillions at the problems while it is present and
pressing, make large plans and promises, and then quietly forget about
it at the best time to spend relatively trivial amounts of money on
effectively preparing for the next gift out of Pandora's box. We've
almost completely memory-holed the entire event, almost *deliberately*
forgot that it happened? Who of you has asked themselves the question
"What have I learned from the COVID-19 pandemic? What can I do better next
time, or even *now*?" Who has heard others ask these kinds of questions?

Honestly, it's much easier for me to now understand
what happened in Germany in the decade after the Third
Reich and World War II or in China after the Mao era—a
sliding off of the attention, a complete lack of fault analysis, of
[strategy](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/PBRWb2Em5SNeWYwwB/humans-are-not-automatically-strategic).
Large chunks of the population probably was small-t traumatized
by being physically and socially isolated in lockdowns, and simply
doesn't want to think about the issue ever again.  There's no good
history books even *trying* to untangle the hyperobject that was the
COVID-19 pandemic[^believe], almost nobody trying to figure out where
our sense-making failed to, ah, make sense, almost nobody trying to
steer the ship[^acknowledge].

[^believe]: Believe me! I've looked!

[^acknowledge]: Exceedingly virtuous exceptions exist, I'll praise the ones I know of at the end.

Nobody seems to be doing any of that.

The cavallery's not coming. Sorry. This is the best we have.

Let that sit for a second or two.

--------------------------

Thus, my plea:

Think about it, at least.

Better yet, talk about it. With friends, family, internet strangers,
non-internet strangers, teachers, students, homeless schizophrenics,
one-night stands, gym-buddies, store clerks, whatever. Make sense of this
hyperevent as it's sliding from memory. Try to figure out what happened,
what could've happened differently. What could be improved.

Better yet, act. Vote for parties marginally saner on the issue. Prepare
yourself. Elastomeric respirators, stocking food, [hand crank
radios](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crank_radio), ask your LLM of choice
for what's useful to buy (or consult your government's advice on this,
if you still trust it).

Better yet,
[donate](https://www.givingwhatwecan.org/cause-areas/reducing-global-catastrophic-risks/biosecurity#what-are-the-best-biosecurity-charities-organisations-and-funds).

Better yet, [use your life
well](https://80000hours.org/problem-profiles/preventing-catastrophic-pandemics/).
Staving of the festering tide, building armour, making weapons. Embodying
wisdom.

[To](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coalition_for_Epidemic_Preparedness_Innovations)
[all](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Johns_Hopkins_Center_for_Health_Security)
[those](https://www.openphilanthropy.org/focus/biosecurity-pandemic-preparedness/)
[who](https://securebio.org/)
[do](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_Threat_Initiative), *thank
you*.

--------------------

As always, I feel compelled to talk about AI, even if it's not quite the
central point of the piece. (Spoiler: The central point is that pandemics
happen, can be *extremely* bad, and humanity as an entity doesn't seem
to have realized that or act in the light of that.)

I'll allow myself one observation: If your AI success story relies
on people reacting sensibly to warning shots, think about that
part again, hard. From my perspective, concerning the danger of
pandemics, humanity got shot in the chest. Humanity doesn't seem
to have learned anything from this. The purported AI warning shot
needs to be either more drastic or easier/faster to act upon than
pandemic prevention and preparedness. Pandemic warning shots are
*easy mode*. Nature gives you a periodic warning, usually it [gently
boops us on the nose](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_Cold),
[sometimes](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_death)
we have to [pick up our teeth with broken
fingers](https://youtu.be/K0cx4d8XkQ0?si=kKL5EMI8w6CsptMz).

AI, if generous, might give us just one.