If we assume that all of this is treatable at current cost per life saved numbers—the most generous possible assumption for the claim that there’s a funding gap—then at $5,000 per life saved (substantially higher than GiveWell’s current estimates), that would cost about $50 Billion to avert.
Of course, that’s an annual number, not a total number. But if we think that there is a present, rather than a future, funding gap of that size, that would have to mean that it’s within the power of the Gates Foundation alone to wipe out all fatal communicable diseases immediately, a couple times over—in which case the progress really would be permanent, or at least quite lasting. And infections are the major target of current mass-market donor recommendations.
I am confused. You list a $50 billion price tag, and then say that the Gates Foundation has enough money to pay that sum “a couple times over”. But the Gates Foundation has a total endowment of only $50.7 billion, which is definitely not “a couple times over”.
Hmm, what’s your source for that? They have a total net-wealth of something like $160 billion, so it can’t be more than a factor of 3. And it seems quite likely to me that both of them have at least some values that are not easily captured by “save as many lives as possible” such that I don’t expect all of that $160 billion to go towards that goal (e.g. I expect a significant fraction of that money to go things like education, scientific achievement and other things that don’t have the direct aim of saving lives but are pursuing other more nebulous goals).
I am confused. You list a $50 billion price tag, and then say that the Gates Foundation has enough money to pay that sum “a couple times over”. But the Gates Foundation has a total endowment of only $50.7 billion, which is definitely not “a couple times over”.
Gates and Buffett have pledged a lot more than that.
Hmm, what’s your source for that? They have a total net-wealth of something like $160 billion, so it can’t be more than a factor of 3. And it seems quite likely to me that both of them have at least some values that are not easily captured by “save as many lives as possible” such that I don’t expect all of that $160 billion to go towards that goal (e.g. I expect a significant fraction of that money to go things like education, scientific achievement and other things that don’t have the direct aim of saving lives but are pursuing other more nebulous goals).